Steven T. Jones

Historic, veto-proof vote launches CleanPowerSF

Sasha Cuttler
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24
Historic, veto-proof vote launches CleanPowerSF

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today cast an historic vote that was more than a decade in the making, approving the CleanPowerSF program – which challenges PG&E’s monopoly by offering 100 percent renewable energy directly to city residents – on an 8-3 vote that would be enough to override an implied veto threat by Mayor Ed Lee.

The outcome was far from certain throughout the two-hour hearing as conservative Sups. Mark Farrell and Carmen Chu led efforts to undermine the program, which was the final work product of retiring San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Ed Harrington, who previously served as the city’s controller for 17 years.

The pair of supervisors offered a series of amendments challenging the state requirement that city residents must proactively opt-out of such community choice aggregation (CCA) programs if they want to remain with PG&E, offering convoluted language that would have required people to opt-in to the program before its launch, and requiring that the $13 million in reserve funds from the SFPUC be covered entirely by CleanPowerSF customers, which could increase its rates.

“It looks like the amendments would be harmful to the success of the program,” Sup. Eric Mar observed, prompting Farrell and Chu to flash broad conspiratorial smiles at one another.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who was undecided and considered a key swing vote in reaching a veto-proof majority, said he also had concerns about the opt-out requirement and wanted to better understand how the amendments would work and whether they were legal. “For me, I’m not interested in putting any poison pills in here,” he said.

Wiener posed questions about the amendments to Farrell and to Harrington, who said it was possible for the SFPUC to have CleanPowerSF customers repay the initial allocation of reserve funds over time but that he wasn’t sure how the opt-in change would work without sabotaging the program.

“It harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people,” Harrington said, noting that rates are based on the number of customers in the program, so it would be nearly impossible to survey everyone’s potential interest without being able to tell them how their bills would be affected.

As it is, the SFPUC has already done extensive surveys of which neighborhoods and demographics are likely to be interested in taking part in CleanPowerSF, initially paying about $10 more per month for 100 percent renewable energy (PG&E’s portfolio includes less than 30 percent renewable). “We’ve done extensive surveys already,” Harrington said. Based on that research, the city is initially rolling out the program to less than a third of city residents, who will be repeatedly notified about how to opt-out, anticipating about 90,000 customers remain in the initial program. 

The program has been repeatedly tweaked over the last eight years that it’s been in development, during which time Marin County launched a successful version of the CCA concept that was developed in San Francisco by legislators Tom Ammiano, Carole Migden, and Mark Leno.

“I feel pretty comfortable trusting Ed Harrington on whether the numbers add up,” said the measure’s chief sponsor, Sup. David Campos, arguing against the Farrell/Chu amendments, later adding, “With Ed Harrington leading this charge, this is as good as it gets. If you don’t like CCA under Ed Harrington, you’re not going to like CCA.”

Farrell claimed to support CCA in concept, but he strenuously objected to the opt-out requirements that Migden included in the enabling state legislation, which she had argued was the only way to make CCAs viable against PG&E’s proven willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars to sabotage would-be competitors.

“It’s the wrong way to legislate, the opt-out. It smells of coercion,” Farrell said. Campos countered that, “The best thing we can give the consumers in San Francisco is a choice, a meaningful choice.”

Wiener ultimately made a motion to delay the item by a week, something Mayor Lee yesterday told the Chronicle he wanted, in order to further study the opt-out issue, telling Farrell that his amendment “feels a little seat of the pants to me.”

Campos and other progressive supervisors who were supporting CleanPowerSF argued against the continuance, noting that it has been years in development and sitting in board committees since January, while the Farrell/Chu amendments weren’t offered until this meeting had already begun.    

“This is not going to change because we wait a week to make a decision,” Campos said. “The terms of this deal are not going to change.”

The motion for a continuance failed on a 4-7 vote, with Wiener joined by Farrell, Chu, and Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who offered no comments throughout the hearing).

Then, as the vote on the Farrell/Chu opt-in amendment came up for vote, Wiener said, “I don’t feel comfortable voting for amendments that I don’t know what they’ll do,” and it failed on a 3-8 vote.

Sup. Malia Cohen had earlier indicated a willingness to support the other Farrell/Chu amendment: saddling CleanPowerSF customers with paying the SFPUC back for reserve fund costs – which Harrington indicated could be dragged out over many years to minimize the impact on rates, and which might not be necessary at all if the initial program exceeds expectations.

That amendment was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Jane Kim, Christina Olague, and John Avalos opposed. Another set of amendments that would keep low-income city residents out of the initial rollout and take other steps to reduce their rates if they opted in – which was developed by Kim, Cohen, and Sup. Eric Mar – was unanimously approved by the board.

Then it was time for the big vote on creating the CleanPowerSF program, approving the contract with Shell Energy Northern California to administer it, and authorizing the initial $19.5 million expenditure. Would there be eight votes to override a veto by Mayor Lee, who has been under pressure by PG&E and their downtown allies to kill the program?

“To be perfectly candid, I struggled mightily with this contract,” Wiener said, reiterating his concern about its opt-in requirement, noting that the measure wasn’t perfect, even though it was significantly improved from earlier versions. It sounded as if he were about to vote against it.

“What we have the opportunity to do is move forward with clean power,” Wiener said, noting that even Marin County supervisors who initially opposed its CCA have come around to supporting it. “This is something I believe we should try.”

And with that, the board voted 8-3 to launch the program in mid-2013, with Chu, Farrell, and Elsbernd opposed.

Campos said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the vote, while key supporters say they are cautiously hopeful it will stand up during next week’s final supervisorial approval on second reading and in a veto override vote, if that becomes necessary. Campos said he was thankful for the work of Harrington, who got a standing ovation after the vote as the board recognized him for his long service to the city.

Earlier in the meeting, Harrington told supervisors that while the program isn’t perfect, and it contains some risks that he considers reasonable, there is no other way the city has identified to meet ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals it has set for itself over the last decade. It is city policy to reduce emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2017 and 80 percent below those levels by 2050.

“This program before you has the only chance of reaching those goals. There’s nothing else,” Harrington said. He also said “it’s an incredibly efficient way to spend money,” noting that the city has spent $90 million on solar and other renewable energy projects that power fewer than 7,000 homes, whereas this $19.5 million will power 90,000 households, possibly without ever tapping into that $13 million reserve fund set aside to cover any losses by Shell, which will buy renewable energy, a role the city hopes to eliminate as it develops its own projects.

Harrington said the ultimate goal of CleanPowerSF is to develop a large enough customer base that the city could use revenue bonds to finance a wide variety of renewable energy projects – many using solar arrays along city-owned property connected to its water system stretching all the way to Hetch Hetchy Valley – that would pay for themselves.

“The real issue is can you build a facility that will have this rate structure support it?” Harrington said.

That’s the real power and potential of CleanPowerSF – finally taking action to address global warming, which will have a huge impact on San Francisco and future generations – as supporters noted in a rally outside City Hall before the meeting. Sen. Mark Leno said that he doesn’t usually weigh in on proposals before the board, but that, “This is an exceptional time and this is an exceptional vote. This is the time that we need to address our inconvenient truth.”

Beyond the video

Andrew Lam
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124
Beyond the video

steve@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors received the official misconduct case against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi this week, with a majority of Ethics Commission members urging supervisors to give more weight to the 45-second video that started this sordid saga than the voluminous record they have compiled at great expense over five months of hearings.

Yet Chair Benedict Hur, the commission’s sole vote against finding that Mirkarimi committed official misconduct, last month argued that supervisors shouldn’t take such a narrow view of this decision, expressing concern about the “dangerous precedent” of removing an elected official for conduct unrelated to his job.

Ironically, Hur will be the one presenting the commission’s case to the board later this month, a decision his colleagues made because the other options weren’t good and because they said he has been so knowledgeable and fair-minded through the process. While Hur is likely to play it straight, the supervisors will have an opportunity to elicit his true perspective — raising questions that will be central to the sheriff’s future.

Will supervisors see their decision as a matter of showing zero tolerance for even minor acts of domestic violence, as Mayor Ed Lee and some women’s groups are urging? Or will they see this as governmental overkill in pursuing a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime, overturning an election and giving mayors too much power to go after their political rivals?

Is this just about Mirkarimi and his actions, or are there larger, more important principles involved in this unprecedented decision?

In the video, Mirkarimi’s wife, former Venezuelan soap opera star Eliana Lopez, displays a small bruise on her right bicep and tearfully tells the neighbor who filmed it, Ivory Madison, that Mirkarimi caused it the previous day, Dec. 31, and “this is the second time this is happening.” She also said that she wants to work on the marriage, but that, “I’m going to use this just in case he wants to take [her son] Theo away from me.”

Lopez last month spent more than three hours on the witness stand being grilled by Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith and Ethics commissioners, explaining why she made the video and how she believed Madison was an attorney and their conversations were confidential. She repeatedly insisted that she was not a victim of domestic violence and criticizing city officials and prosecutors for persecuting her family and taking away her husband’s livelihood.

There was nothing in the testimony that obviously impeached Lopez or hurt her credibility. To many observers -– particularly Mirkarimi supporters, who made up the vast majority of those giving public comments to the commission -– her testimony marked the moment when the city’s case began to unravel. Indeed, on Aug. 16 the commissioners voted unanimously to reject most of the charges that Lee filed, including witness dissuasion, abuse of authority, and impeding the police investigation.

In the end, there was just that video, and commissioners on Sept. 11 added a final statement into the record that they believed it more than anything Lopez has said since then. Even Hur said that he found it compelling, and that more may have happened on Dec. 31 than Lopez and Mirkarimi have admitted.

But there really isn’t much evidence to support that belief, and Hur said in August that it shouldn’t matter anyway. If the city’s vague and untested official misconduct language can apply to low-level misdemeanors unrelated to an official’s duties, he said, “we are opening this provision up to abuse down the road.”

 

Locking down reforms

Andrew Lam
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0

steve@sfbg.com

Realignment, California’s year-old program of diverting more inmates and parolees from state prison to county jails and probation offices, was borne of necessity: The state faced a severe budget crisis and had been ordered by the federal courts to reduce the population in its overcrowded prisons. But Realignment is proving to be a real opportunity to address inmates’ needs and reduce recidivism, particularly in San Francisco, where progressive notions of rehabilitation and redemption have deep roots.

“Realignment is the most significant criminal justice reform in decades,” says Assembly member Tom Ammiano, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee and has helped oversee the process. “The motivation of many of us came from things that were thwarted, like sentencing and parole reform, in Sacramento for many years.”

San Francisco was uniquely positioned to thrive under the new system and to be a model for other counties that seek to improve on the 70 percent recidivism rate among state prison inmates, and the myriad problems and costs that spawns. Former Sheriff Michael Hennessey brought a variety of innovative educational and support services into the jail during his 32-year reign that ended last year (see “The unlikely sheriff,” 12/20/11).

“It’s more than an opportunity. It’s in line with the Michael Hennessey doctrine of enhancing public safety while elevating the idea of redemption, and I subscribe to that,” said suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who successfully ran as Hennessey’s endorsed heir before Mayor Ed Lee ousted him over domestic violence allegations. “Michael Hennessey made famous the rehabilitation programs inside the jail and outside the jail.”

San Francisco was also in a good position as both a manageably sized city and county, and one that had room for the influx of inmates. It was ordered by the courts in the 1980s to reduce its crowded jail population – the peak jail population of 2,300 is now down to about 1,550 – and gained even more capacity last year when the SFPD’s crime lab scandal resulted in hundreds of drug cases being thrown out by the courts.

“It’s something that makes sense for San Francisco,” Acting Sheriff Vicky Hennessy told us. “We’re doing better than most other counties because we had the bed space and we had community programs. Michael Hennessey is a visionary…and he got these community programs out there.”

Undersheriff Ellen Brin, who oversees the jail, said the main difference among inmates that San Francisco is dealing with under Realignment – a total of 2,258 in the jail over the last year, staying an average of 60 days each, and another 306 convicts under post-release supervision – is that they’re in local custody longer than before.

“It’s sort of the same population we’ve always dealt with, but maybe we’re dealing with them on a longer term,” she said.

That creates some challenges – Brin said there are more inmates who are a little more hardened and “more sophisticated” – but it also gives local programs more of a chance to help the inmates. That was one of the arguments for Assembly Bill 109, the main legislation that created Realignment, along with five other related bills.

“That was the whole plan about AB 109 is the counties do it better,” Brin said. “For us, we’ve been doing these programs for so long, with reentry and other community programs, so it’s easy for us to manage this population because they’re here longer.”

Realignment has also prompted more collaboration among the affected local agencies – particularly the Sheriff’s Department, Adult Probation Services, and the District Attorney’s Office – and their counterparts on the state level.

“We haven’t had an overarching initiative that we’ve all been required to sit around a table and work on. This has kind of brought us together, and we’ve discovered other areas where we need to work together as well,” Hennessy said.

That has sparked new programs. For example, San Francisco just started to bring those about to be paroled from state prison into the local jail before their release in order to integrate them into the San Francisco rehabilitation system. “We’re creating a reentry cycle for them so they aren’t just getting off the bus and landing here and going directly to Probation for an interview,” Hennessy said. “Now, we’re going to try to bring them here 60 days early and provide them with wrap-around services, so that we can get them established, get them housing, give them the best opportunity we can for a successful reentry.”

With counties now responsible for the people local judges send to jail, there’s more interest in reforming sentencing laws and exploring more progressive and community-based alternatives to incarceration, which is the focus of the new San Francisco Sentencing Commission that held its first meeting last month.

“District Attorney [George] Gascon is very supportive of Realignment, DA’s Office spokesperson Stephanie Ong Stillman told us. “He has said it could have the greatest impact on justice reform in decades. San Francisco is on its way to being a model for the state.”

But the flip-side of San Francisco’s advantages has been a growing backlash against Realignment in conservative counties with disproportionately high incarceration rates and a lack of capacity in their jails – which is often a byproduct of combining tough-on-crimes policies with anti-tax attitudes, something Ammiano is now dealing with in Sacramento.

“There is a lot of push-back from the Republican Party and alarmism over Realignment,” Ammiano said, noting that he’s just waiting to be hit with anecdotal stories about a transferred inmate committing some horrific crime, even though Realignment only involves low-level convicts who committed non-violent and non-sexual crimes.

Ammiano will work with a newly constituted Board of State and Community Corrections that will distribute funds to counties that need to beef up each their jail capacities or their treatment programs. That mix hasn’t been set yet, but Ammiano said he won’t support counties that simply seek more state resources to maintain high incarceration rates.

“In one way, it’s perturbing and the other way, it’s exciting,” Ammiano said. “For me, the more the county has programs, the more sympathetic I’ll be.”

Yet in this era of chronically underfunded government entities, even San Francisco is strained. Hennessy and Brin say Realignment has brought more inmates with serious mental health issues into the jails for longer periods of time — and that has stretched their resources.

“That’s where we lack, even before AB 109, and I’d like to get more people in there who are experts in the mental health field,” Brin said.

Hennessy agreed, but added, “The mental health program we have is extremely good, it’s just overtaxed because we’re seeing many more people, and this is across the state.” Mental health isn’t the only issue. “The other thing that is a concern is housing for people,” Hennessy said, explaining that the city needs both supervised housing and regular low-income housing for former inmates returning to the community. Maintaining the Sheriff’s Department progressive legacy in the face of new challenges is one reason why Mirkarimi sees danger in Lee’s decision to overturn that election and consolidate more power in the Mayor’s Office. “It’s important that the independence of the Sheriff’s Department be preserved,” Mirkarimi said. “Programs can easily be changed by successive mayoral administration if there isn’t that check on power.” But for now, Brin said San Francisco’s various law enforcement officials have been working well to realize the potential of Realignment: “The collaboration between the criminal justice partners has just been really, really great. Everybody is working together to try to accomplish the same thing.”

Ethics Commission rejects Mirkarimi delay request

Sasha Cuttler
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143
Ethics Commission rejects Mirkarimi delay request

The Ethics Commission – in a decision made by Chair Benedict Hur, to whom the commission had given the authority to make procedural decisions – today rejected a request by attorneys for suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi to delay transfer of his official misconduct case to the Board of Supervisors until after the Nov. 6 election.

Mirkarimi’s attorneys argued that the decision has been overly politicized during the election season, with supervisorial challengers turning the decision into a litmus test and interest groups polling voters on whether they would be more likely to reject supervisors who voted for reinstating Mirkarimi. The City Charter requires the board to act within 30 days of receiving the official record from Ethics, which will probably happen early next week.

“The fate of the sheriff has been made a key political issue in the election by the media, candidates, consultants, mayoral appointees to commissions, and others. Sending the record to the Board immediately prior to an election deprives the Sheriff of a neutral decision-maker, as guaranteed by the Due Process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments,” attorney David Waggoner wrote to the commission on Sept. 10, attaching eight articles and campaign pieces linking the Mirkarimi decision to the supervisorial races.

But Hur disagreed. “There is no evidence suggesting that any member of the Board of Supervisors will disregard the facts and the law and instead vote to sustain the charges based upon perceived political pressure,” he wrote. Actually, he argued that “granting the Sheriff’s request would cause the Commission to engage in the type of political maneuvering that it seeks to avoid. The commission will not manipulate the timing of the Board’s decision in a misguided attempt to predict the nadir of public pressure on the Supervisors.”

Mirkarimi told the Guardian that he was disappointed by the decision, noting that it was Mayor Ed Lee’s piling on of excessive charges that the commission found no evidence to support that have delayed the board’s deliberations until the height of the election season. “This is so vividly and transparently political.”

Committee approves CleanPowerSF over downtown opposition

Sasha Cuttler
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51
Committee approves CleanPowerSF over downtown opposition

The question of whether San Francisco creates a renewable energy program that offers an alternative to Pacific Gas & Electric got its first major hearing at City Hall today, with the business community claiming it’s too expensive and supporters arguing that the time has come for the city to address climate change and the long-term energy needs of city residents and businesses.

The Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee voted 2-1 in favor creating CleanPowerSF, entering into a contract with Shell Energy Northern California to administer the program, and devoting $19.5 million from the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s water fund to help launch it and buy clean power for city residents.

Sups. John Avalos and Jane Kim supported the project, while Sup. Carmen Chu was opposed. It now goes to the full Board of Supervisors next week, where it is expected to have progressive support and be opposed by the fiscal conservatives.

“I do think we will have the necessary majority to get this through,” the measure’s sponsor, Sup. David Campos, told us. But one open question is whether Mayor Ed Lee will veto a measure that his SFPUC appointees developed but his downtown allies are trying to kill, and if so, whether there are eight supervisors willing to override a veto.

But Campos noted that SFPUC officials testified today that CleanPowerSF is the only way they’ve identified to meet the city’s ambitious official goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which call for a reduction of 20 percent below 1990 levels by the end of this year and an 80 percent reduction by 2050.

Supporters who testified today included environmentalists, progressive groups, and young people who cast addressing climate change as the defining struggle of their generation. “This, not to go overboard, is the most important vote you’ll ever do,” said the Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein.

Those who spoke against the program included the usual array of downtown groups that have traditionally defended PG&E’s interests – including the Committee on Jobs, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and Plan C – and they were joined by an unusually large number of elderly Asian individuals wearing stickers opposing the project.

“It’s a bad program that doesn’t meet even the basic elements of its original promise,” said Chris Wright, executive director of the Committee on Jobs, which PG&E has helped fund since its inception. Like most CleanPowerSF opponents, they have long opposed even the concept of community choice aggregation (CCA), the state law that allowed the city to create CleanPowerSF.

PG&E’s longtime support by local politicians has eroded in recent years because of its overkill campaigns against public power initiatives and supporters and its negligence in the deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion.

Even GGRA Executive Director Rob Black told the committee, “PG&E, a local company, candidly has its problems.” But he and other project opponents – and even a few supporters of the project – centered much of their opposition on the involvement of Shell, which has a bad reputation and environmental record, like almost every other multinational energy company.

“I have the same qualms about Shell that everyone else does,” said Katherine Roberts, who said that she nonetheless supports the project, calling it the only way for most San Franciscans to directly support the development of renewable energy sources. Shell was the sole bidder on a project that requires enormous financial wherewithal.

Campos calls the focus on Shell a diversionary tactic: “PG&E already buys energy from Shell. To the extent people don’t want Shell in the picture, Shell is already in the picture.”

Both the supervisors and the mayor will be under intense pressure to derail CleanPowerSF, with that campaign led by downtown groups and IBEW Local 1245, the union that represents PG&E workers. Sup. Scott Wiener, who says he’s still undecided, told us that his office was flooded with phone calls today, mostly in opposition to the project.

Words and deeds

Andrew Lam
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4
Words and deeds

steve@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee appointed engineer and pro-development activist Rodrigo Santos to fill a vacant seat on the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, both men talked about the urgent need to save this troubled but vitally important institution.

“Our economic future is directly tied to the success of City College,” Lee said at a press conference, touting the school’s critical job-training role.

But when you cut through all the politics and hyperbole, the school’s biggest single problem is a lack of money — and the mayor and his new trustee aren’t doing much to help.

Neither Lee nor Santos have yet endorsed or publicly supported Proposition A, the $79-per-parcel tax that would stave off deep cuts to a district whose accreditation has been threatened over its anemic cash reserves and reluctance to scale back its course offerings (see “City College fights back,” July 17).

Nor have they appealed for support from their deep-pocketed allies in the business community, which City College supporters say should be doing more to support the district.

And while some say Lee is finally getting ready to endorse Prop. A, he’s done nothing to help the campaign.

“It’s a shame because [the mayor] has pledged to support City College,” John Rizzo, president of the Board of Trustees and a supervisorial candidate from District 5.

Lee also refused a request the trustees made last year to ease the more than $2.5 million in rent and fees that the district pays annually to the city. That’s a stark contrast to the city’s generous support of the San Francisco Unified School District, which gets an annual subsidy from the city of around $25 million, thanks to a ballot measure pushed by city officials of various ideological stripes.

“K-12 is important, but when we try to get help from the city, it falls on deaf ears and I don’t know why. Maybe little kids are cuter,” Rizzo told us.

Sup. Eric Mar said that dichotomy is a real problem, particularly given City College’s current challenges and the important role it plays in providing low-cost training to local workers. Mar has called for a hearing this month before the Joint City and School District Select Committee, which oversees SFUSD’s relationship with the city.

“I support stronger city support for City College,” Mar told us.

Asked about Lee’s unwillingness to help with City College’s fiscal situation, mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey said Lee has offered logistical support from city officials to help City College overcome the threats to its accreditation and has been carefully monitoring the situation, but she didn’t directly address why he has withheld financial support or endorsed Prop. A.

“The mayor has not taken a position on the parcel tax and is focusing his efforts on supporting the college’s need for serious fiscal and management changes and protecting its accreditation,” she told us by email Sept. 7. “The mayor knows it is more important than ever that the City support City College to make sure they get back on their feet for the sake of current and future City College students and for all San Francisco residents.”

But City College officials aren’t buying it. “Talk and nice words don’t mean anything anymore,” Rizzo said.

Other Prop. A supporters agree.

“The mayor needs to step up and support this,” Trustee Chris Jackson told the Guardian, arguing that most of the district’s problems stem from steadily declining financial support from the state. “We have a revenue problem.”

“It is the workforce training vehicle for the city,” said Rafael Mandelman, a candidate for trustee who has been actively supporting Prop. A. “Maybe now is the time when the city shouldn’t say no to that.”

Falvey responded by saying, “The City supports all of our public education institutions in some capacity. Each public education institution also pays the city for some of the required services it is provided.”

Other Prop. A supporters say they are hopeful that Lee may still come around. Alisa Messer, president of American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, which represents City College faculty, told us, “The mayor says he supports City College and we’re hoping he will support the measure soon.”

Gabriel Haaland, who has been working on the measure for SEIU Local 1021, also told us as we were going to press on Sept. 10, that Lee seems to be coming around: “From what I understand, the mayor is about to endorse it.”

 

 

PROMISE OF SUPPORT

When Lee appointed Santos — who has raised an unprecedented amount of money for his race, $113,153 as for July 1, mostly from the real estate and development interests he represents as president of Coalition for Responsible Growth — some argued that it would bring needed financial support for the district and the Prop. A campaign.

“He is expected to bring his allies in these fields into the fight to save City College, which faces a critical 2/3 vote on a parcel tax this November,” Tenderloin Housing Clinic Director Randy Shaw wrote on his Beyond Chron blog on Aug. 22, a day after telling the Guardian how the parcel tax was essential to City College’s future and Santos was uniquely positioned to support it.

But Santos, whose campaign didn’t return Guardian calls on the issue, hasn’t appeared at any Yes on A campaign events or offered any discernible support for the measure, whose supporters had only raised a little over $20,000 as of July 1. While there is little organized opposition to Prop. A, the fact that it needs approval by two-thirds of voters is a challenge that requires strong support.

Rizzo said Shaw’s argument doesn’t hold up. “It’s a nice theory,” he said, “but I haven’t seen evidence of that, and I haven’t seen Rodrigo at any Prop. A events.”

Santos hadn’t been involved with City College or educational issues before deciding to run for trustee, and he’s widely perceived as an ambitious politico setting himself up to run for the Board of Supervisors. At his press conference, Santos pledged to aggressively fight for City College.

“I join an institution that must be saved, and I’m absolutely committed to that goal,” Santos said.

Lee assembled a variety of representatives from “the city family” at his press conference, including trustees Natalie Berg and Anita Grier, Interim Chancellor Pamila Fisher, representatives from the Controller’s Office, Board of Education, Department of Children Youth and their Families, and the Mayor’s Budget Office.

“They, after all, need our help, need our support and they will not be able to accomplish it all by themselves,” said Lee, who pointedly didn’t say anything about the parcel tax at the event, even though he sang the praises of the district. “It empowers those economic sectors that we consider most valuable to our future, especially in the area of health care, hospitality, biotech, and now technology in general. We have become dependent on City College for their ability to prepare future workforces.”

Lee also sounded a tough love theme, saying “any improvement means a change from the status quo” and praising Santos as “someone who shares my vision of reform and will support the tough decisions ahead.”

Indeed, the board members face a number of tough decisions in the coming weeks, from whether to abdicate some of their authority to a special trustee empowered to make unilateral decisions about what programs to cut or campuses to close. The college is responding to a threat from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges to live within its means or lose its accreditation.

Santos didn’t mention Prop. A during the press conference that followed his swearing in, instead offering vague platitudes and promises that he’s willing to work hard and make tough decisions, while also making some puzzling statements about the district’s current situation.

“We must support the interim chancellor, Pamila Fisher,” he said. “Our primary duty is to ensure she enjoys the support and tools needed to implement difficult reforms. At the same time, we will hold her accountable, we will help her, we will challenge her.”

He appeared unaware that Fisher’s tenure ends in just a few weeks, well before any reforms could possibly be approved or implemented.

Some Prop. A supporters are hoping Santos will also challenge his allies in the business community to open their wallets and support both Prop. A and ongoing operations at City College.

“It would be great for the businesses to step up in a big way because they are really benefiting from our workforce training programs,” Messer said. “It’s clear to me the business community understands how important City College is to this city.”

Now, City College’s biggest supporters say it’s time for the city and the business community to put their money where their mouths are.

“City College certainly gives back to the people of San Francisco,” Rizzo said, “and it’s time for the city to give back to City College.”

Commissioners sharpen Mirkarimi case and select unlikely rep

Sasha Cuttler
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165
Commissioners sharpen Mirkarimi case and select unlikely rep

 The Ethics Commission wrapped up nearly six months worth of proceedings on the official misconduct charges against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi today, finalizing its findings of fact and choosing Chair Benedict Hur to make its presentation to the Board of Supervisors even though he was the sole dissenting vote against removing Mirkarimi from office. 

After making the key decisions during a marathon meeting on Aug. 16, today’s hearing was mostly about mopping up, and it was the most sparsely attended of the hearings so far. But there were still a couple of tough issues to hash out, and the commissioners who voted against Mirkarimi tried to strengthen their case at the last minute.
The City Charter mandates removal of an official if at least nine supervisors find he committed official misconduct. The commission had earlier discussed how they viewed that finding and the punishment as separate issues, but decided against recommending a punishment after discussing that charter language. 
Commissioner Beverly Hayon today sought to remove any doubt about where she stood, adding a personal statement into the record that she thought the sustained charges — its 4-1 finding that Mirkarimi’s grabbed his wife’s arm during a Dec. 31 argument and subsequently pleaded guilty to false imprisonment — warranted Mirkarimi’s removal.
In a sign that the commissioners are paying attention to the political climate that has formed up around their deliberations, she made a reference to a discussion and vote last month by the Commission on the Status of Women and sought to clarify any “confusion” about where she stood.
Commissioner Paul Renne also sought to sharpen the findings of fact by adding language indicating the commission found the testimony of Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, to be a less credible and compelling description of what happened on Dec. 31 than the tearful 45-second video that neighbor Ivory Madison helped her make days after the incident displaying the bruise on her arm and saying she wanted to document the incident in case they divorced and there was a custody battle over their three-year-old son. 
That language was inserted in the document without objection, a decision that drew a sharp rebuke from Lopez’s attorney, Paula Canny, during the public comment portion of the hearing. “My client wants you to know that you’re flat out wrong,” Canny said, criticizing the commission’s hostile treatment of both Lopez and Linnette Peralta-Haynes, Lopez’s confidante on the day Madison unexpectedly called the police. 
“It has to be Eliana is not credible to justify your finding,” Canny said, accusing commissioners of selecting facts to fit impressions they formed when watching the emotional video. “The only reason Eliana made that video is to be used in a custody dispute.”
Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner tried unsuccessfully to make changes to a commission summary document that he called “very one-sided,” including trying to add language indicating that the commission had unanimously rejected most of the charges that Mayor Ed Lee brought against Mirkarimi, such as witness dissuasion, abuse of power, and interfering with a police investigation. 
Waggoner also objected to Hur’s suggestion that attorney Scott Emblidge, who is doing pro bono legal work on the proceedings for both the commission and the Board of Supervisors, calling it a conflict of interest given that the commission’s role is akin to that of prosecutor. And on that point, he found support from Renne, who was unaware that Emblidge will also be advising the supervisors, a dual role he found troubling. “I’m a little surprised and I don’t know why the board doesn’t have independent counsel,” Renne said.
Emblidge promised a “dry recitation” of the commission’s findings, but Waggoner recommended the commission’s executive director, John St Croix, when pressed by Hur for an alternative, a choice Hur rejected because St. Croix hasn’t been present at all the hearings. Finally, Renne suggested that Hur do the presentation, saying that he has been fair and represented all arguments well during the proceedings so far, something that Hayon and Commissioner Dorothy Liu enthusiastically agreed with. 
It was an unconventional decision given that Hur made strong arguments on Aug. 16 about the troubling precedent that he thinks the commission’s decision represents, saying it gives the mayor too much power and opens the door to political manipulation if the official misconduct provisions are construed so broadly.
But he accepted the duty, telling the commissioners: “I’m willing to do it. It is awkward given that I was in the dissenting view, but I’ll do my best.”The case is expected to be sent to the board by Sept. 18 and it will have 30 days to act, meaning the decision will be just a few weeks before an election in which five supervisors are running to keep their jobs.Mirkarimi’s team has sought to delay the transfer of the case until after the election, noting many political interest groups and supervisorial candidates have been publicly putting pressure on the supervisors to remove Mirkarimi.

Another IPA

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Another IPA

steve@sfbg.com

BEER I’m addicted to strong beer.

In a less confessional mood, I might just leave it at the fact that I love strong, malty, hoppy India pale ales, the nectar of the gods. That weak-tasting lagers and pilsners just don’t quite do it for me. But the truth is that I’ve begun to think of my taste for strong beer as something closer to an addiction, one that I’m increasingly powerless to resist.

It doesn’t matter what time it is — or what my intention, mood, or level of sobriety. When the bartender asks what I want, my mouth almost involuntarily forms the words “Racer 5” or “Lagunitas IPA” or some other strong beer, as if it has a mind of its own and knows what it wants. I find it difficult to argue with my own mouth.

Even at a superb beer spot like Magnolia Pub and Brewery, with its wide variety of great and tasty beers — many of which I’ll taste from time to time, just to remind myself of what I’m missing — I’ll always wish that I’d ordered one of its house-brewed Proving Ground IPAs instead, and get that on my next round. Never mind the consequences of several 7 percent alcohol beers, it’s just what I have to have.

I seek out bars like Toronado Pub and Murio’s Trophy House that carry Pliny the Elder, Russian River Brewing Company’s decadent double IPA, with its chart-topping 8 percent alcohol content. And on the special occasions when they’re privileged to carry a keg of Pliny the Younger — the rarely-released triple IPA with 10.5 percent alcohol, the malty hops oozing from each pint — I’ll be there with my fellow addicts at any hour of the day, staying until that keg is dead (which usually happens within an hour or so.)

Peer pressure may have something to do with it, because increasingly it seems as if my closest mates share and help enforce my addiction. I’ve been heckled mercilessly when I try to mix things up with a different, lighter pitcher during our long sessions at Zeitgeist, or when we’re taking advantage of the $3 happy hour pints at Dalva and I stray from ordering Green Flash or Bombay by Boat.

Addictions need reinforcement, and we all seem to be part of cultural moment when strong beer — the stronger the better, as befits our maturing constitutions — is king. It’s our birthright and our expectation. When Southern Pacific Brewing Company opened in my Mission District neighborhood last year, it surprised nobody that it brewed a strong pale ale, a stronger India pale ale, and an even stronger extra India pale ale.

As a Northern Californian in his mid-40s, I’m a child of the microbrew revolution, the first generation that rebelled against watery, mass-produced “beer,” rejecting the Coors and Budweiser cans favored by the Baby Boomers in favor of the stronger, tastier ales hatched in bottles and kegs by California craft brewers.

That’s when it began, simply enough, with beers like Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that would find themselves fermenting in ever-larger vats due to their popularity with my people.

But pretty soon, they weren’t cutting it anymore, particularly after I began to experiment with homebrewing and developed a taste for the sweet malts and hops that I mixed into my wort, spurred on by watching my yeast consume carbs and expel strength into my bubbling concoction.

Maybe there’s a cure for what ails me, or what ales my buds crave. Frankly, I’m not looking for one. I’ve embraced the fate that strength is my weakness, and I’ll drink it in by the pitcher. Cheers.

 

Insurance executive increases his payout to Greenlining

Sasha Cuttler
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2
Insurance executive increases his payout to Greenlining

A consumer group that supports Mercury Insurance in its efforts to charge some drivers higher rates just got a donation of $195,000 from Mercury’s founder. The money is going to create a political operation supporting two ballot measures – Mercury’s Prop. 33 and Prop. 38, a tax measure sponsored by Molly Munger, who also gave the group $225,000.

Greenlining Institute, which has the mission of protecting low-income people from predatory financial institutions, defends its stands. But since the group opposed a very similar Mercury measure two years ago, critics are wondering how much Greenlining is influenced by its corporate donors.

Just as the Guardian was going to press last week with a story about the strange alliance between Greenlining and Mercury to back Prop. 33, which would increase car insurance rates for those who haven’t maintained continuous coverage, that connection got far cozier and more lucrative for Greenlining.

Greenlining’s General Counsel Sam Kang – the main proponent for backing Prop. 33, a stand that was controversial within the organization – has taken a sabbatical until Election Day to support the Yes on 33 campaign using a $195,000 donation that Mercury founder George Joseph made a new 501c4 offshoot organization: Greenlining Action.

Before the Guardian independently learned of those new developments, Greenlining Executive Director Orson Aguilar contacted us about writing a response to our article, which we welcome, although he hasn’t followed through yet. “Regarding the article, I think it was fair given your early conclusion that $25k led to our decision. Clearly we have issues with that, but enough said,” he wrote to us.

I disputed the characterization that my article implied the $25,000 donation from Joseph to Greenlining was the deciding factor in the organization’s decision to support Prop. 33 after opposing a similar measure in 2010, but Aguilar sounded a similar criticism in a piece he posted to Greenlining’s website on Sept. 6 entitled “Check the Facts and Support Prop. 33.”

“Simply put, Proposition 33 is good policy that will lead to lower rates by encouraging more competition among insurance carriers in California,” Aguilar wrote, a disputable claim that Kang offered. “You may have also heard that Harvey Rosenfield, the founder of Consumer Watchdog, is attacking Greenlining for supporting Prop 33. Harvey claims that a $25,000 table sponsorship by Mercury Insurance at Greenlining’s 2012 Annual Economic Summit led to our support of Prop 33.”

Actually, Rosenfield hadn’t made that claim in the Guardian article that Aguilar referenced in his write-up, nor did he acknowledge the $195,000 donation that Greenlining Action received from Joseph on Sept. 4, two days before posting his open letter minimizing the impact of a $25,000 contribution.

I asked Aguilar why he didn’t mention that hefty donation, or the fact that Kang had taken a long sabbatical to do campaign work (which I learned of by an auto-response to his email about the sabbatical that also said “If your note is regarding Proposition 33, please call my cell phone”), or asking about Kang’s current financial arrangements and possible conflicts of interest.

Aguilar responded with a high-minded announcement of Greenlining Action: “This November, voters will have a chance to pass tax measures that ensure that schools and colleges have enough money to serve our students. Other propositions would make common sense reforms to California’s system of incarceration – saving the state millions in dollars while keeping us safe. Another proposition would give large corporations unlimited influence over California politics and must be defeated. Another would bring lower auto insurance rates for families working from paycheck to paycheck.

“As an organization, we decided not to sit on the sidelines any longer. In our work listening to hundreds of working-class voters, they demanded more concise and accurate information on initiatives from a trusted reliable source.

“Greenlining Launches Greenlining Action

“We have decided to take action by re-launching a c4 organization, Greenlining Action. Greenlining Action was originally launched several years ago when we unsuccessfully tried to freeze tuition at the University of California by imposing a tax on millionaires. Unfortunately, we came up a few hundred thousand signatures short to qualify our petition for the ballot. This year we have developed an initiative slate with recommendations on all ballot measures. Our hope is to put this slate in the hands of thousands of voters this election.”

So far, Greenling Action is only listed in campaign filing documents as officially advocating for two measures: Prop. 33 and Prop. 38, which would raise taxes to help fund public education, whose chief sponsor, attorney Molly Munger, also gave $225,000 to Greenlining Action.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield said he finds the dual roles played by Kang (who could not be reached for comment) unseemly, particularly if he’s being paid to work on the campaign: “To use the name of the nonprofit to further your personal interests, that’s personal inurement.”

Obama’s appeal to SF’s divided Left draws mixed reactions

Sasha Cuttler
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26

President Barack Obama has a divided political base, as local Democrats who showed up at the Laborers Local 261 hall last night to hear his nomination acceptance speech were immediately reminded by leftist protesters. And despite the belief by some true believers that his speech won over its target audience, I have my doubts.

Courage to Resist and its allies from Code Pink, the Occupy movement, and other groups targeted this Democratic County Central Committee watch party (and 24 others around the country) with an appeal that Obama free Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of turning over classified documents to Wikileaks who has been kept in solitary confinement for almost two years without trial.

“President Obama needs to live up to his promise to protect whistleblowers,” said Jeff Paterson, founder of Courage to Resist and himself a Gulf War resister (and coincidentally the ex-boyfriend of newly elected DCCC member Kat Anderson). For more on that protest, read this.

DCCC member Hene Kelly (and a phalanx of SFPD cops) helped keep the entrance clear – something the good-natured protesters didn’t seem to threaten – and said she understood their perspective: “They’re here because they have a right to ask President Obama to free Bradley Manning, and I agree with them.”

But inside, DCCC Chair Mary Jung wasn’t so happy about this rain on their parade, telling the Guardian that she supported the ideas behind Occupy but said, “I think the message is misdirected at us,” ticking off Democratic Party positions on same sex marriage, immigration reform, and other issues.

When I told her that the protest was actually about Manning, whose fate is pretty clearly in the hands of Obama and his appointees, she offered this hopeful assessment: “I would hope it’s going to work it’s way through the courts as it’s supposed to. There is a process.”

When I tried to get District Attorney George Gascon’s take on whether that process comports with normal legal and civil rights standards, he told us, “I have no opinion. I need to digest the information a little more.” (That was more than Willie Brown offered, with the former mayor, unregistered political lobbyist, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist responding to my questions with, “I’m a columnist. I don’t make comments to other newspapers,” after he gave a speech to the gathered Democrats.)

But it didn’t take Gascon long to digest Obama’s speech, telling us afterward, “I think he hit it out of park. If this doesn’t get the enthusiasm up, nothing will.”

Yet my reaction, and most that I’ve heard since then from people who listened to the speech, wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. Yes, Obama had some good lines, and yes, he fairly effectively countered many of the Republican misrepresentations of his record and ability to quickly turn around the failing economy he inherited. And yes, I think the substance and messaging were more progressive than his centrist acceptance speech of four years ago.

“Times have changed and so have I,” Obama declared at one point.

But this is a party that still shares the same basic paradigm as the Republican Party, this story of American exceptionalism, protected by noble military “heroes” and guided by altruistic virtues, working within an economic system that can just keep growing and expanding the prosperity of US citizens indefinitely – the kind of rhetoric that still drove the crowd to a jingoistic chant of “USA, USA, USA!” at one point.

Yet it was a crowd where not a single person in the local hall applauded or cheered for this line by Obama: “Our country only works when we accept our obligation to each other and future generations.” He’s right, but he’s also been running the country in a way that robs from future generations in many realms (debt, infrastructure, global warming, energy, education, etc.) and doesn’t address our obligation to the protesters out front and the valid perspective that they represent.

“There are many shades of blue in the Democratic Party. We’re all blue,” Jung told me.

Perhaps that true, because I felt a little blue coming away from this event, but maybe not in the sense that Jung intended.

Hoping for change in Obama’s acceptance speech

Sasha Cuttler
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Hoping for change in Obama’s acceptance speech

Four years ago, when I watched Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, I was hopeful about the prospects for change, but disappointed by his safely centrist acceptance speech. This year, opting to watch tonight’s speech on television rather than being there, the only hope I feel is that Obama will finally focus on fighting for the 99 percent, which seems like his best chance of keeping his job.

Frankly, I had just about given up on two-party politics – cynical about the feckless Democrats, refusing to be driven by fear of Republican boogie-men, ready to advocate for the Guardian to endorse Green Party nominee Jill Stein – when the Democrats speaking at the DNC rediscovered their populism and turned their rhetorical guns on the predatory rich who are exploiting most Americans.

“People feel like the system is rigged against them,” Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Senate candidate from Massachusetts, told the convention last night. “And here’s the painful part: They’re right.”

Yes, they are right. Most people understand that both the political and economic systems are rigged games controlled by powerful interests, for powerful interests. And it’s good to hear top Democrats sounding that theme again, as First Lady Michelle Obama did Tuesday night and former President Bill Clinton did last night.

Obama has been battered by his bi-partisan approach these last four years. Aggressive conservatives fought his every move, demonizing the first black president in ways that defy reason, labeling him a socialist taking over the health care for pushing health care reform that left insurance companies in charge and requires people to buy coverage, an idea long advocated by Republicans. And Progressives felt like Obama sold them out on issue after issue, from extending tax breaks on the rich to propping up predatory banks to escalating the wars on drugs and Afghanistan.

Now, Obama finds himself in a tight race with a Republican ticket that insanely wants to “double down on trickle down,” as Clinton put it. And if Obama thinks his centrist approach of four years ago is going to win this race – and, more importantly, break the debilitating political gridlock that his conciliatory approach and conservative intransigence have created – then all of us concerned about rising plutocracy could be sorely disappointed.

At this point, I’m not yet ready to place my hope back in a president whose unwillingness to fight for traditional Democratic Party values has delayed meaningful action on this country’s most pressing problems. But tonight, in setting the tone and themes for this election and his second term, my hope is that he makes a change and begins to fight for my side and my vote.

Where to watch: Rather than surrounded by tens of thousands of hopeful Democrats in a stadium, like four years ago, I’ll be surrounded by a few dozen hopeful Democrats at a watch party sponsored by the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. Join us at the Laborer’s Local 261, 3271 18th Street, San Francisco. It is from 6-8:30pm and the suggested donation is $25.

The latest insurance scam

Andrew Lam
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The latest insurance scam

steve@sfbg.com

Mercury Insurance and its billionaire founder George Joseph are trying, for the second time in two years, to charge infrequent drivers more for car insurance.

Only this time, the measure has the surprising support of a progressive advocacy group that represents low-income communities of color — and that recently received a substantial donation from Mercury.

Proposition 33 — which so far has received fairly little news media attention in an election dominated by talk of taxes — is a reprise of a similar measure, Prop. 17, that went down to defeat in 2010.

The measure seeks to allow insurance companies to set premiums based in part on whether consumers have had continuous coverage. In other words, Mercury wants to raise rates on people who take a break from driving for economic, environmental, or other reasons.

The new measure contains a few exemptions targeted at sympathetic groups singled out by opponents in the last campaign, including active-duty soldiers and those unemployed due to layoffs.

And Prop. 33 also has a significant new backer, the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute.

That alliance has drawn the ire of Consumer Watchdog, the nonprofit group that created California’s regulated car insurance system with Prop. 103 in 1988 and has been fighting to defend it ever since.

“It raises rates on the people that Greenlining claims to represent,” Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court told us.

GOLDEN STATE GOLD

Mercury got its start in the 1960s, selling insurance to car owners who had spotty records, charging high rates — and aggressively challenging claims. About 80 percent of its business is in California.

And Mercury has been trying for some time to challenge the landmark Prop. 103, the 1988 ballot measure that set tight regulations on what car-insurance companies can charge — and what they can use to set rates.

Under that law, insurance companies can only use three basic rating factors: how long someone has been driving, vehicle miles traveled per year, and a driver’s safety record. There are 16 more factors that the state has allowed to have a smaller impact on rates, including the “persistency discount” that rewards drivers for staying with a single company.

Court said there are good reasons for that discount, noting that it costs companies more to market to and administer new customers than to serve existing ones.

Prop. 33 would allow consumers to shop around and still keep that discount — something that Court said only makes sense if you want to give insurance companies the power to divide customers by class and punish people who choose to give up driving for a while.

“It’s sleight of hand,” Court said. “Some drivers get a discount, everybody else is going to get a surcharge.”

Two years ago, every single legitimate consumer group in the state opposed Mercury’s efforts. So why is the prominent Greenlining Institute changing its tune?

Greenlining says the new measure is better. But the group’s staffers also acknowledge that Mercury is now a significant donor to Greenlining. Joseph appeared as a panelist at Greenlining’s 19th Annual Economic Summit in April, and the company donated $25,000 at that time.

Greenlining General Counsel Sam Kang, who pushed for the new position and is the designated point person in defending the stance, told us the new exemptions make the measure worth supporting. “The protections are what really distinguish Prop. 17 from Prop. 33,” Kang said. “It’s better than what we’ve got now.”

Kang argues that the increased competition it could foster among insurance companies might lower premiums for everyone. “If customers are willing to walk away” from their current insurance provider and still keep their continuous coverage discount, Kang told us, “that’s how it will drive down rates.”

Court called it “ridiculous” to claim this corporate-sponsored measure — Joseph has personally given almost $8.3 million to the Yes on 33 campaign, the lion’s share of its total funding — would drive down premiums through increased competition for customers.

“There’s no dispute on that and Greenlining is using tactics that are really reprehensible, and it’s a shame because they are likely to be the centerpiece of Mercury’s campaign,” he said. “George Joseph is trying to get cover from a group that has no business doing this.”

Greenlining Executive Director Orson Aguilar acknowledged the organization was divided on this measure, and that is still open to being convinced it made the wrong call. “This was hotly debated. This was not an easy issue for us,” Aguilar told us. “Frankly, if we’re wrong, we’re happy to be convinced.”

GREENLINING’S CAMPAIGN ROLE

Yet it may be too late for that: The state voter handbook has already been printed, and the Yes on 33 campaign has been touting the group’s support. “The Greenlining Institute — a consumer group founded to fight unfair business practices — supports Proposition 33 because it protects consumers and allows this discount to everyone who has followed the law,” says a ballot argument that signed by Kang and CDF Firefighters President Robert T. Wolf and California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Julian Canete.

“As you know, we opposed Prop. 17 and we opposed it quite vigilantly,” Kang told us. And the main reason was the organization didn’t buy Mercury’s spin that it would simply lower rates for those with continuous coverage. “If someone is going to get a discount, someone else is going to pay more,” Kang acknowledges.

Yet he is now parroting the Yes on 33 campaign’s rhetoric that the measure simply rewards drivers who “followed the law” and maintained continuous insurance coverage, saying the exemptions that Mercury wrote into the new measure actually give those groups — soldiers and the unemployed, which he notes are disproportionately poor people of color — more protections than they now enjoy.

“If you have continuous coverage for five years, you are eligible for a persistency discount,” Kang said, casting the measure as simple and straightforward.

Court and his group strongly object to that simplistic approach, asking why an insurance company would sponsor a measure that lowers premiums. The reality, consumer advocates say, is that this is a duplicitous measure that relies on a flawed premise and is really about giving insurance companies a new tool to capture certain customers and bilk those who can least afford it.

“These exemptions are bullshit, and they are written to be very narrow. It’s lipstick on a pig,” Court said. “It exposes how it raises rates for all low-income people who don’t meet these very narrow exemptions.”

In fact, the official summary by the Attorney General’s Office makes it clear that prop. 33 “Will allow insurance companies to increase cost of insurance to drivers who have not maintained continuous coverage.”

Kang disputes that objective analysis, telling us, “The ballot title and summary is up for discussion as far as what it meant.”

Kang admitted that Mercury is supporting Greenlining. “They gave us $25,000 in anticipation of the summit, and we anticipate they they’ll help us out in the advocacy of this measure,” Kang said. “Corporations regularly contribute to us, and it has never guaranteed our consent or dissent on anything.”

He defended the approach, telling us, “Sometimes working with corporations is the only way to make monumental changes,” citing their successful efforts to improve the billing practices of PG&E, which regularly makes six-figure donations to Greenlining.

Aguilar also strongly defended the organization’s integrity. “To say that just because we got a stipend from Mercury Insurance” that bought their support, Aguilar said, is simply wrong. “Money comes from somewhere.”

Greenlining’s allies in various campaigns to protect low-income communities say they’re willing to give the group the benefit of the doubt. Joshua Arce, executive director of the SF-based Brightline Defense Project, doesn’t think donations from Mercury Insurance influenced the group’s position, noting that it has also received contributions from PG&E and AT&T then subsequently joined campaigns that opposed those companies’ practices.

Instead, he said Greenlining was probably just offering support to the measure because Mercury had addressed Greenlining’s criticism of Prop. 17 two years ago. “That’s one of the things about Greenlining,” Arce told us, “they say, ‘If you fix all the things we laid out, if you address them, then we’ll support it.” Yet Court said the minor changes made between Props. 17 and 33 shouldn’t have won over such a potentially influential ally. “I’m told they’re going to use Greenlining in the commercial. It’s clearly a transactional relationship,” Court said. “When the billionaire behind Mercury Insurance says it, it’s hard to believe, but it’s easier to believe coming from an organization called Greenlining.”

The drunken bishop, pelted Republicans, and God

Sasha Cuttler
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13

San Francisco’s intolerant new Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone got arrested for DUI over the weekend and there’s a hurricane bearing down on the Republican National Convention and its hypocritical fundamentalists – maybe there is a God after all.

Are free Golden Gate Park events fading away?

Sasha Cuttler
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25
Are free Golden Gate Park events fading away?

San Francisco’s countercultural community was built at least partly through free concerts and gatherings in Golden Gate Park, including the legendary Human Be-In and Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane concerts in the late-’60s. But these days, as corporations starve local government but seize public spaces, grassroots groups and populist performances are being forced out of the park.

Events without expensive tickets and corporate sponsorships (such as this month’s Outside Lands) or endowments from dead billionaires (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, coming up in early October) just can’t afford the rising fees charged by the Recreation and Parks Department, a reality that is quietly ending an important San Francisco tradition and legacy.

A few weeks ago, organizers of the Power to the Peaceful Festival – a free concert featuring Michael Franti and Spearhead and other big acts, which drew tens of thousands of people to the meadow formerly known as Speedway annually for more than a decade – announced that it was canceling next month’s event because of onerous fees.

“The only way to have produced the festival this year would have been to turn it into a ticketed event,” organizers wrote in their July 31 announcement. RPD officials were going to charge the event $77,000 in permit fees this year, dealing it a death blow after also forcing the cancellation of last year’s event by instituting a strict 40,000 attendee cap, which was nearly impossible to enforce for a free event.

If we accept the neoliberal perspective that has taken hold of San Francisco – which sees government’s role as facilitating whatever corporations want to do and hoping they share some of their profits, or at least create some good jobs – it makes sense. After all, the cash-strapped RPD made $1.7 million in profit-sharing off Outside Lands this year, up from $1.4 million last year.

The same logic has caused RPD, under the mercenary leadership of Director Phil Ginsburg, to rent out its recreation centers to the highest bidders and fire the recreation directors that used to treat them as public resources, and to let the private City Fields Foundation cover many parks in artificial turf. Again, through a strictly economic lens, it makes a certain amount of sense.

“As the steward of our parks, the Department works with event organizers to host diverse events in our parks, it is our shared responsibility to make sure the City and the event organizers have plans and resources in place to care for our park land and ensure public safety. The Department is always ready to work with all event organizers to modify their event planning for safe and successful events,” RPD spokesperson Connie Chan told us.

Power to the Peaceful – ironically, an event celebrating the plight of ordinary people against powerful political and economic interests around the world – just didn’t have the resources to meet the standard, so out they go. Same thing with the venerable Anarchist Book Faire, which was also forced from the park by rising fees this year after 17 years in the park’s County Fair Building.

Again, there’s a note of irony to this exodus, with city officials suddenly deciding the anarchists could no longer police themselves and needed to pay for four Park Police officers to watch over a festival that has been without violent incident throughout its history, unless you count a speaker getting pied last year (which the self-sufficient anarchists easily dealt with on their own).

“We had put this thing on for 17 years and there were no problems until this new guy came,” Joey Cain of Bound Together Bookstore, which puts on a free event whose fees have steadily risen to almost $14,000. “We’ve had to increase our rates every year, and we were starting to lose some vendors.”

On top of that, city officials had also cracked down on free offerings that surrounded the free event, banning Food Not Bombs from serving free meals to visitors and people from setting up information tables outside the main event.

So now the event, coming up in March, will be held at the Armory. Cain admitted that rent on the building they used in Golden Gate Park was still fairly cheap compared to similar sized venues around town, “as it should be, being owned by the city.”

But when city departments like RPD become dependent on corporate contributions, public spaces become commodified, and we begin to lose access to the last places in town where our creator endowed us with the right to assemble freely and pursue our happiness: our public parks.

Good propaganda ain’t cheap. Sorry, no rebates for errors.

Sasha Cuttler
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27
Good propaganda ain’t cheap. Sorry, no rebates for errors.

UPDATED AND CORRECTED BELOW It wasn’t surprising to read Randy Shaw’s misleading praise of Mayor Ed Lee for appointing Rodrigo Santos to the City College board. Much of Shaw’s salary comes from the city contracts that his Tenderloin Housing Clinic administers, so he has turned his Beyond Chron mouthpiece into the equivalent of Pravda in touting the party line of Lee and his supervisorial apparatchiks.

For that blind loyalty, Shaw has been handsomely rewarded. On July 31, the Board of Supervisors even approved a Lee-proposed balloon payout of $91 million to THC for its contract administering the Mayfair Hotel that was retroactive all the way back to 2009. Can anyone imagine another nonprofit that could dig so deeply into city coffers, for work that has supposedly already been done, who wasn’t giving a little something back to these ambitious politicians who sponsored it?

But apparently Shaw – who used to have some progressive credibility before so blatantly selling the movement out a couple years ago – doesn’t need to even get the facts right in his propaganda posts. When I asked him at yesterday’s Lee/Santos press conference whether and why he supported Santos – a villain in most progressive circles – he argued Santos was needed to help win support for Prop. A, the parcel tax for City College.

Shaw said the measure needed a two-thirds vote to be approved, a claim he also made in today’s piece. That didn’t sound right to me, and the Elections Department confirms that it isn’t: Prop. A needs only a simple majority to pass. [[8/23 UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Ernestine at the Department of Elections told me yesterday Prop. A needed only a simple majority, but she called back today to say she was mistaken and that it does indeed require a two-thirds vote.]] Shaw also claimed a couple weeks ago that the Board of Supervisors would delay the Mirkarimi decision until after the election, which also wasn’t true: the Charter requires the board to act within 30 days of receiving the Ethics Commission recommendations.

I sent Shaw a message asking about whether his erroneous beliefs affected his analysis, and to explain the basis for THC’s $91 million kickback, and he hasn’t responded to the questions, as usual. But when you’re a poverty pimp feeding off of political patronage, you’re probably golden as long as you get the politician praise right. Cha-ching!

 

Talk about chaos

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Talk about chaos

steve@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS Is this the last Burning Man? After 26 years of resiliently expanding on the vast canvas of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, and reaching what is arguably the pinnacle of its popularity and artistic innovation, the answer is: Probably not.

But there have been more portents of doom than ever this year, culminating last week when the event’s organizer — San Francisco-based Black Rock City LLC — issued a dire warning about new efforts by Pershing County officials to impose steep fee increases and regulation of behavior (including possibly banning minors) at this annual orgy of free expression.

After a Nevada judge concerned with burner morals and values recently worked with the county’s Board of Commissioners to void its agreement with BRC and place Burning Man under its new Festival Ordinance, BRC sued the county, claiming it “imposed new, unnecessary, unlawful, and potentially ruinous fees on BRC, threatening BRC’s ability to conduct Burning Man 2013 and going forward.”

The suit won’t affect this year’s event, which officially begins Aug. 26 and which was already being heavily battered by other forces, particularly Mother Nature of late. Art and setup crews on the playa, which is extra dusty after a record-dry winter, are telling horror stories of sustained 60-mph winds, day-long whiteouts, freak storms, and temperature extremes.

That could be one reason why a glut of Burning Man tickets went on the market in recent weeks, with many desperate sellers accepting less than face value and knocking the bottom out of the market for any ticket scalpers still hoping to cash in on record early demand for Burning Man tickets.

BRC started the year under a torrent of criticism for a new ticket lottery system that left most veterans without them. The organization gradually took several countermeasures, including canceling a secondary ticket sale and selling those 10,000 tickets directly through established camps and collectives, organizing an aftermarket ticket exchange and taking anti-scalper actions, successfully petitioning the Bureau of Land Management to increase the population cap to 60,900 (last year, the event peaked at below 54,000), and releasing a few thousand extra tickets at the very end. And that big year unfolded against the nearly forgotten backdrop of BRC’s internal work developing the new nonprofit Burning Man Project to take over the event from the LLC in a few years.

Each action prompted its own backlash — from both burners and anti-burners concerned about the skyrocketing population to myriad complaints about BRC policies and direction — and set of warnings of impending doom.

When I asked event founder Larry Harvey on the phone about this crazy year, he agreed, “It’s been full of alarm and incident.”

The incident that most alarms Harvey now is the sudden turn that Pershing County has taken, tripling this year’s Burning Man fees to $450,000 and potentially jacking them above $1 million in coming years, reportedly to fund more policing of risqué behaviors that Judge Richard Wagner has publicly objected to.

BRC’s lawsuit claims the judge and county officials used “a collusive state lawsuit as to which BRC was not a party” to regulate the event “not out of a neutral and objective concern for public safety issues, but because of their opposition to what they consider to be the content and culture of Burning Man, in violation of the First Amendment.”

“We’re doing this because we felt we had no recourse,” Harvey told me, although he expressed far less concern about other perceived existential threats to Burning Man. “I would like to take some modest credit for solving the scalper problem,” Harvey said. He claimed validation in the current easy availability of tickets at face value and minimized the role of departing veterans, discouraged visitors from afar, and those scared by dust storm stories.

“Last year was remarkably good weather, and it was unlikely we would see that again,” Harvey said fatalistically. But Burning Man is meant to be difficult and unpredictable. After all, he said, “We’re talking about chaos here.”

Guardian City Editor Steven T. Jones is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture.

Full circle

Andrew Lam
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52
Full circle

steve@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi in March, he publicly took the position that it was an act of official misconduct when Mirkarimi grabbed his wife’s arm during a Dec. 31 argument, subsequently pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, and was placed on probation for three years.

Lee and his allies said that under those conditions, Mirkarimi could no longer effectively function as the city’s top elected law enforcement officer and that his actions clearly violated the City Charter’s ban on "conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers."

The City Attorney’s Office, through deputies Peter Keith and Sherri Kaiser, has maintained that position throughout the investigation and Ethics Commission proceedings over the last five months. On August 16, on a 4-1 vote, the commission agreed and recommend the Board of Supervisors find its former colleague guilty of official misconduct, which would almost certainly result in his removal from office.

But that simple set of facts and interpretations belies the ugly spectacle that Lee and the City Attorney’s Office actually decided to create — at great cost to taxpayers, Mirkarimi’s reputation, and the public’s faith in the proceedings — over the last five months.

Instead of sticking by their initial position, Lee and his attorneys decided to pile on a long list of other official misconduct charges: dissuading witnesses to his crime, impeding a police investigation, abusing his authority in several ways, engaging in a pattern of abuse of women, refusing to cooperate with a city investigation, lying to officers in a scheme to keep a gun, and other charges.

Almost all of those accusations were included in the original written charges that Lee filed on March 21 — before the city had actually begun its investigation to learn whether there was any evidence to support them. Keith and Kaiser continued to make all those accusations right up until the end.

When the Ethics Commission finally deliberated on August 16, going through each of the main factual allegations against Mirkarimi, one by one, it unanimously agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence to support any of those other charges, even using the "preponderance of evidence" standard that is lower than the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal cases.

So in the end, the case against Mirkarimi ended at the same place where it began: with the question of whether pleading guilty to a misdemeanor act of domestic violence warrants the removal of an elected official. But the implications and repercussions of what has transpired over these last five months could be felt for many years, in ways that it’s impossible to predict today.

WHAT IS OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT?


With very few legal precedents to guide them, the commissioners spent most of the nine-hour hearing on Aug. 16 wrestling with how to interpret the city’s untested new official misconduct language, how directly the wrongful behavior must relate to the office, and whether broadly interpreting those two issues gives too much power to the mayor.

Underlying that discussion is the question of whether the statute and the city’s interpretation of it will eventually be struck down as unconstitutionally vague by the courts, which Mirkarimi will likely turn to if the board removes him from office. But the commission pointedly refused to enter that debate, with Commissioner Jamienne Studley saying, "I don’t think determining constitutionality is what I signed on for as a commissioner."

Chair Benedict Hur, the sole dissenter in recommending a finding of official misconduct, expressed far more concern about the precedent they were setting than with the fate of Mirkarimi, whose actions he strongly condemned as "clearly wrongful and unlawful."

"There has to be a direct relationship of the behavior to the office held," Hur said. "If we don’t find a nexus, we are opening this provision up to abuse down the road."

Commissioner Paul Renne led the charge in interpreting misconduct in the broadest possible way, arguing it didn’t even have to be related to his official duties. "There’s nothing in that clause that says the misconduct has to relate to the office," Renne said.

But Hur called that a "dangerous precedent," saying he has "grave concerns" about how such a broad interpretation could be applied in the future. "I have a lot of concerns about where you draw the line if you don’t relate it to official duties," he said.

For example, could members of the Board of Supervisors be removed after getting arrested at demonstrations — as has happened many times before in connections with labor and other disputes — or even for using colorful language with constituents or colleagues that might violate a future mayor’s "standard of decency?"

Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp said there’s a good reason why recall is the preferred means of removing an elected officials accused of wrongdoing, calling the charter "an imperfect document" that can’t cover all circumstances — indeed, it doesn’t allow for the removal of mayors, even those who commit serious crimes — noting that "this is a rarely brought proceeding and it can have the effect of contravening the will of the electorate."

"These proceedings," Kopp said, "are far too susceptible to the vagaries of politics."

THE PILE-ON


Lee’s decision to overcharge Mirkarimi could be a costly one. The City Attorney’s Office won’t release expenses associated with ongoing legal actions like this one, but most indications are that it will run into the millions of dollars, perhaps many millions depending on how Mirkarimi fares in the courts if he is removed and challenges the city’s actions.

According to the City Attorney’s Office, the official misconduct proceedings against former Sup. Ed Jew in 2007 cost the city $381,505 in legal fees, but that was a relatively short and simple proceeding, with just one Ethics Commission hearing and couple of state court appearances before the case was settled.

By contrast, the case against Mirkarimi has already entailed five months of detailed exchanges between the two sides’ attorneys, covering a wide array of legal issues, and months-long investigations of matters only tangentially related to the core charge. The city has paid out money for expert witness. Mayor Lee cast a wide net to catch the fish that he had already hooked before setting out to sea.

Even if the Jew case had played out to completion, it would likely have cost just a fraction of what Mirkarimi’s will, for a simple reason: Mayor Lee acted quickly and brought a broad array of charges before investigating them. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom investigated whether Jew really lived in the city and then brought just that narrow charge.

The simple residency question was enough to warrant Jew’s removal, and Newsom didn’t even need to get into the far more serious corruption charges related to Jew being caught with $80,000 in marked bills as part of an FBI extortion sting, for which Jew is still serving a five-year term in federal prison.

Lee has refused to justify his decision to pile on the charges and introduce defamatory declarations unsupported by direct evidence, such as the long declaration of key witness Ivory Madison, most of which was stricken from the record after Commissioner Paul Renne called it "clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well" and said "a first-year lawyer should know that much of it is inadmissible and it should not have been given to us."

Even though Keith apologized to Renne and the commission, Lee and his lawyers continued to defend much of that declaration and use it as the basis for many of their most incredible accusations.

"You received a great deal of evidence, most of it from the mayor and most of it unchallenged," Keith said in his closing statement, glossing over the multitude of challenges and the fact that most evidence doesn’t support the city’s charges.

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey wouldn’t address a list of Guardian questions about overcharging the case and continuing to rely on discredited evidence. Instead, the Mayor’s Office stands by this Aug. 16 prepared statement: "I am pleased that the members of the Ethics Commission, following a careful review of the evidence, and in the face of a sustained campaign to distract and misdirect them from the facts, agreed with me that Ross Mirkarimi’s actions constitute official misconduct and fall below the ethical conduct we expect of the sheriff."

City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said his office also stands by the process: "We respect Ethics Commissioners’ differing opinions about the remaining counts. But nothing about the commission’s conclusions would cause us to pursue these charges of official misconduct differently if we had to do it over again."

But Mirkarimi’s team says it is Lee who has repeatedly sought to distract and misdirect the public, whether through unsubstantiated claims in his charging documents or Lee’s public statements that Mirkarimi "beats his wife" and other comments that blow a single arm-grab out of proportion.

"What the commission has effectively done is agreed with us that’s the only issue," Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner told reporters after the hearing, noting that he had offered to stipulate to those facts from the beginning and avoid a prosecution that his closing brief deemed "a dog and pony show." Mirkarimi also told reporters that "the piling on of these charges has weighted us down" and complicated his defense. He added, "I leave this process concerned that the will of the voters is being undermined."

THE PRICE OF OVERKILL


Perhaps it was understandable for the city to use over-the-top tactics on Mirkarimi, who has certainly been weakened by proceedings that generated reams of fodder to be used against him in future elections if he survives the board’s removal vote. But the tactic also seems to have hardened the stance of Mirkarimi’s supporters and fed their conviction that this was a politically motivated prosecution and misuse of public resources.

During more than three hours of public testimony on Aug. 16, with each speaker strictly limited to less than two minutes each, speakers overwhelmingly favored Mirkarimi and condemned the city case as overkill.

"Some of the things done in this case, and the levels this has gone to, is outrageous," said Brenda Barros, who works in the city’s public health clinic and said these resources could be better applied to help the "seriously abused women" she works with. Barros called the city’s case "a political witch hunt."

"I think Mayor Lee has overstepped his boundaries and I think you should find that as well," said Pedro Fernandez, a private investigator and former San Francisco Police officer.

David Elliott Lewis, a member of the city’s Mental Health Board, noted that the Sheriff’s Department has no civilian oversight, making the role of an elected sheriff who is progressive and independent of the city’s good-old-boy police culture all the more important. "Those who claim otherwise are really politically motivated," he said.

One issue left unresolved by the Ethics Commission is whether Mirkarimi should be removed even though the case against him was substantially whittled down. In fact, several commissioners indicated during the hearing that they thought the findings and punishment were separate issues.

"Do you agree that it is a two-step process we have to deal with?" Renne asked Keith, referring to the official misconduct finding and whether Lee abused his discretion by removing Mirkarimi.

"There is a determination of, are the consequences appropriate to the wrongful action," Keith replied.

But later, when attorney Scott Emblidge — who is volunteering his legal services to both the Ethics Commission and Board of Supervisors on this case — offered his interpretation that the charter language requires removal of officials found to have committed official misconduct, the commission accepted that and opted not to consider recommending a lesser punishment to the Board of Supervisors.

Mirkarimi’s team objected to the commission’s rewriting of new charges based on its evidentiary findings, and things got so confusing by the end that the commission decided to meet one more time in early September to finalize its recommendation.

So the case probably won’t get to the board until mid-September. Nine votes are required to remove Mirkarimi and the charter requires the board act within 30 days, meaning that final vote will be just a few weeks before the Nov. 6 election, timing that will only increase perceptions that politics will largely determine its outcome.

Lee appoints Santos, a staunch development advocate, to CCSF board

Sasha Cuttler
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22

Rodrigo Santos, a structural engineer who heads the pro-development advocacy group San Francisco Coalition for Responsible Growth, had already raised an unheard of amount of money in his race for the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, $113,153 in just six months, mostly from real estate and development interests.

Today, he got another big boost when Mayor Ed Lee appointed Santos to fill the vacancy on that board created by the recent death of Milton Marks, giving the ambitious Santos a big advantage in the fall contest and perhaps signaling Lee’s support for making deep program cuts to satisfy the accrediting commission’s demand that CCSF cut expenditures and beef up its reserves.

“Tough decisions and reform are what City College needs at this time,” Lee said at a press conference this afternoon, calling Santos “someone who shares my vision of reform and will support the tough decisions ahead.”

Although Lee said Santos “is committed and passionate about education,” Santos hasn’t been active on education issues before running for this office. His passions seem to lie mostly with advocating for developers and opposing government regulations in front of the Planning Commission and other bodies, where he regularly testifies, and in helping fellow conservatives gain power on city boards and commissions.

The appointment continues Lee’s pattern of appointing and relying on controversial conservatives in key areas, from his chief fundraiser and economic adviser, venture capitalist Ron Conway, to his recent reappointment to the Planning Commission of Republican Michael Antonini, who gave Santos the maximum $500 contribution in his CCSF race.

“I join an institution that must be saved. I am absolutely committed to that goal,” Santos told a press conference in the Mayor’s Office. He said that he will work to “achieve consensus” around solutions to the troubled institution’s problems, while also declaring, “We must support the interim chancellor, Pamila Fisher.”

But rather than someone who seeks political compromise, Santos’ reputation is as more of polarizing and ideologically conservative firebrand who regularly criticizes government and progressives as part of the downtown alliance that includes Plan C, Committee on Jobs, Building Owners and Managers Association, the SF Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Realtors PAC

“I actually find him to be pretty divisive in trying to work on issues at [the Department of Building Inspection],” Debra Walker, who served with Santos on the Building Inspection Commission. “He always seems to come into a situation attacking and I hope he doesn’t bring that to this board.”

Walker, a longtime progressive activist and former supervisorial candidate, said that she and her political allies have long endured nasty attacks from Santos and his CRG bretheren.

“They spend all of their time attacking progressives and he gets pretty intense about attacking rather than working with people,” she said. “CRG is about getting people elected who are conservative, that’s their whole reason for existence, perpetuating the real estate industry’s impact of city policies, which has had a negative impact on the middle class.”

Asked about that reputation by the Guardian, both Lee and Santos denied it and refused to answer follow-up questions. Santos said CRG has a “diverse membership” and told us, “I don’t know why you would cast that as polarizing.”

Yet its board is made up almost exclusively of real estate and development interests who have shown themselves to be politically ambitious, winning key mayoral appointments to the Building Inspection and Small Business commissions and working with mayoral staffers to hold onto key leadership positions, edging out supervisorial appointees in the process.

Sup. John Avalos, who was targeted by a CRG independent expenditure campaign in 2008, said that he researched Santos’ background on education issues and was a little surprised not to find anything. “More than anything, the appointment says more about Lee’s pro business leanings,” Avalos told us.

It was also telling that Lee included two of the most conservative CCSF trustees in his press conference, Natalie Berg and Anita Grier, but that more liberal trustees Chris Jackson and John Rizzo were neither consulted nor notified directly about the appointment. “I’m sorry the mayor didn’t involve us more or let us know,” Rizzo told us.

While Rizzo didn’t endorse Santos – instead backing Jackson, Steve Ngo, and Rafael Mandelman (who Rizzo said “really does have the best interests of the district at heart”) – he didn’t want to offer an opinion on Santos, saying that he wants to work constructively with him to solve the district’s problems: “I welcome him to the board and hope he will welcome the work we’ve been doing.”

Santos told reporters that he starts every work day with an “open house” at his office from 5:20-8am, discussing various issues with anyone who wants to stop by, before getting into his engineering and administrative work for his firm, Santos & Urrutia. “I will bring that same commitment to City College,” he pledged.

Commission narrows Mirkarimi charges to one but recommends removal

Sasha Cuttler
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238

The Ethics Commission today unanimously rejected most of Mayor Ed Lee’s official misconduct charges against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi – including abuse of power, impeding a police investigation, and dissuading witnesses – but voted 4-1 to recommend the Board of Supervisors find him guilty of official misconduct for grabbing his wife’s arm on Dec. 31 and pleading guilty to the resulting misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment.

The sole dissenting vote, Chair Benedict Hur, said he had “grave concerns” that such as a broad interpretation of what behaviors constitute official misconduct would give mayors a “strong tool” to inappropriately remove their political adversaries (or at least invite charges that they were), as Mirkarimi supporters allege is happening now.

But the rest of the commission adopted a broad interpretation of what city officials and voters intended in 1995 when they overhauled the City Charter and added a new official misconduct clause banning “conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers.”

“I have a lot of concerns about where you draw the line if you don’t relate it to official duties,” Hur said, appealing to his colleagues that, “I think this charter provision was meant to be narrow.”

Commissioner Paul Renne – who in earlier hearings had taken a strong role in excluding prejudicial evidence against Mirkarimi and was thought to be a possible vote in his favor – today led the charge in interpreting misconduct in the broadest possible way, arguing it didn’t even have to be related to his official duties, while the three other votes against Mirkarimi made the case that his conduct and conviction were related to a sheriff’s role overseeing the jail and its domestic violence programs.

“I think the voters would be shocked if we were to say a public official who pleaded guilty to domestic violence has not committed an act of official misconduct,” Renne said.

But Mirkarimi’s attorneys and supporters – who outnumbered those urging his removal (mostly domestic violence advocates) by more than 4-to-1 during the three hours of public testimony taken today – say the shocking thing is for a just-elected official to be unilaterally removed from office by a political adversary for reasons that today’s proceedings showed were tenuous.

“No case has ever been upheld in court to remove an elected official for a low-level misdemeanor,” said Paula Canny, the attorney for Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, who sat next to and supported his husband throughout today’s nine-hour proceedings.

Indeed, the city is wading into uncharted waters and the commission had few court precedents to draw from in making its findings. It’s also possible that the charter provision is unconstitutionally vague, as Mirkarimi’s attorneys have alleged, both here and in court, with an earlier judge opting to wait until after the city’s process plays out before ruling on the question.

But first, it will be up to the Board of Supervisors, where nine votes on the 11-member body are required to remove Mirkarimi. Today’s hearing got complicated at the end – as commissioners wrestled with what it means to essentially throw out the mayor’s charges and adopt their own more narrow accusation, and how to present everything to the board – that it decided to hold one more meeting in early September to adopt a summary and send everything to the board, which will then have 30 days to act.  

“I leave this process concerned that the will of the voters is being undermined,” Mirkarimi told reporters after the hearing. Holding his hand, Lopez said, “I’m shocked to see what happened today, but we are fighters.”

 

For complete coverage and analysis of what happened today, what it means, and what’s next, read next week’s Bay Guardian.

Why?

Andrew Lam
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44
Why?

steve@sfbg.com

Just a couple years ago, it seemed like the golden age of marijuana in San Francisco, the birthplace of the movement to legalize medical pot and a national leader in creating an effective regulatory framework to govern an industry that had become a legitimate, respected member of the business community.

More than two dozen patient cooperatives jumped through a variety of bureaucratic hoops to become licensed dispensaries, most of them opening storefront businesses that were often the most attractive, clean, and secure retail outlets on their blocks, sometimes in gritty stretches of SoMa, the Tenderloin, or the Mission.

“Pretty much everyone involved agrees that San Francisco’s system for distributing marijuana to those with a doctor’s recommendation for it is working well: the patients, growers, dispensary operators, doctors, politicians, police, and regulators with the planning and public health departments,” I wrote in “Marijuana goes mainstream” (1/28/10).

Since then, San Francisco’s medical marijuana industry has only become more established and professional, complying with new city regulations (such as changing how edibles are packaged to avoid tempting children), paying taxes and fees — and making very few waves. According to city officials, there have been almost no complaints from anyone about the dispensaries — and in San Francisco, people complain about everything.

But in the last six months, the full force of the federal government has brought the hammer down hard on this budding business sector, forcing the closure of eight brick-and-mortar dispensaries and instilling paranoia and insecurity in those that remain.

In just the past few weeks, two of the city’s oldest and most respected dispensaries –- HopeNet and the Vapor Room -– were forced to close their doors.

There’s been little rhyme or reason to which clubs get those dreaded letters warning operators and landlords to shut it down or be subject to asset forfeiture and prison time — and the officials involved have refused to explain their actions, except with moralistic anti-drug statements or unsupported accusations.

“These are people who played by the rules and paid their taxes, and now they’re being punished for it,” said Assembly member Tom Ammiano, a leader in creating a state regulatory framework to govern the distribution of medical marijuana, which California voters legalized in 1996. “This is pure thuggery. They are ignoring due process out of blind prejudice and ambition.”

Ammiano met with Melinda Haag, the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, who has coordinated the local crackdown from her 11th floor office in the Federal Building near City Hall, shortly after she announced her intentions to go after medical marijuana. He said she was like a throwback to a less enlightened era.

“In talking to Haag, not only is she a bit of a bully, but she’s totally uneducated about the issue,” Ammiano told us. When she told him that her office has received many complaints about the dispensaries, he asked to see them -– even making a formal Freedom of Information Act document request –- but she has yet to produce them. “Her duplicity is very moralistic, it’s like going back 100 years.”

Neither Haag nor anyone from the White House or Justice Department would grant an interview to the Guardian to discuss the reasons for and implications of the crackdown, or to answer the list of written questions her office asked us to submit. Instead, Haag gave the Guardian this statement and refused to respond to our follow-up questions:

“Although all marijuana stores are illegal under federal law, I decided to use our limited resources to address those that are in close proximity to schools, parks and playgrounds and operations so large that they constitute marijuana superstores. I hope that those who believe marijuana stores should be left to operate without restriction can step back for a moment and understand that not everyone shares their point of view, and that my office has received many phone calls, letters and emails from people who are deeply troubled by the tremendous growth of the marijuana industry in California and its influence on their communities.”

But in San Francisco, where more than 80 percent of residents consistently support medical marijuana in polls and at the ballot box, most people don’t share Haag’s point of view. And city officials contest many of her claims, from saying the dispensaries are “left to operate without restriction” to her implication that they promote crime or endanger children to the haphazard way she has targeted dispensaries to the characterization that many people are “deeply troubled by the tremendous growth of the marijuana industry.”

In fact, to talk to city officials, virtually nothing Haag says is true.

“We’re not getting nuisance complaints [about the dispensaries],” Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, the city’s medical director who oversees regulation of the dispensaries by the Department of Public Health, told the Guardian. “We’ve had very few complaints over the years and good cooperation with the storefront part of the regulations.”

Almost across the board, city officials and club operators praise one another and the cooperative relationship they’ve established over the last four years. Some of San Francisco’s biggest dispensaries have somehow avoided Haag’s wrath, but their once-open operators are now afraid to speak publicly, warily checking the mailbox each day. A thriving industry eager to pay its taxes and submit to regulation is being driven back underground, with all the uncertainty and hazards that creates.

“The question everyone is asking: Why here, why now, why these businesses? Nobody knows the answer,” Bhatia said. “We’re left to speculate and guess about motives.”

MULTI-AGENCY ATTACK

The federal crackdown has been stunning in both its speed and breadth, with various federal agencies coordinating their attacks. The IRS is auditing the biggest clubs and denying write-offs for routine business expenses, the DEA is threatening asset forfeiture efforts, and Haag and the DOJ are threatening prison time and court injunctions.

Underlying all of that is President Barack Obama, who pledged not to use federal resources to go after those in compliance with state law in the 17 states where medical marijuana is legal. Then, last year, Attorney General Eric Holder suddenly announced a new policy: “It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”

When we sought an explanation and clarification from the White House Communications Office about why well-established medical marijuana collectives carefully operating under California law were suddenly deemed “drug traffickers” that wouldn’t be tolerated, they refused to answer and referred us to a statement Obama made to Rolling Stone magazine.

“What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana -— and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law,” Obama told the magazine.

That simplistic explanation – which conveniently ignores how people are supposed to get this medicine – has infuriated local growers and patients. It’s particularly galling for those who supported Obama and took him at his word in the last election, and who don’t understand why he is suddenly escalating the federal war on drugs, ignoring local laws and values, and re-criminalizing their communities.

FUNERAL PROCESSION

Hundreds of medical marijuana supporters gathered on Aug. 1 for a New Orleans-style funeral procession at the Lower Haight intersection near where Vapor Room had operated -– without incident and with praise as a model business from three successive district supervisors –- from 2004 until the previous day.

The mood was festive and defiant on that sunny afternoon, where advocates from both sides of the bay gathered to express solidarity with the closed clubs and resolve to battle through the recent setbacks.

“I’m feeling the fight,” Steve DeAngelo, star of the reality television show Weed Wars and head of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, which received Haag’s shut-down-or-else letter last month, told the Guardian. “I don’t think we can allow taking a few hits to break our spirit….We started this struggle to win it and we’re not going to stop until we do.”

Local politicians and business leaders also came to offer their support.

“As president of the Lower Haight Merchants Association, I’m upset that Vapor Room had to shut down,” Thea Selby, who is also running for the District 5 supervisorial seat, told us. “The Vapor Room did a lot of good for this neighborhood and was a great business.”

Marchers, most clad in black, carried “Cannabis is Medicine: Let States Regulate” and other signs -– as well as a makeshift coffin and massive puppet depicting a scowling Haag -– and danced down the middle of the street as Brass Mafia horns belted out lively jazz tunes. By the time the procession reached Haag’s office at the Federal Building, a chill fog had darkened the skies and the mood.

DeAngelo took the bullhorn first and called out Obama directly: “Either you were lying, sir, or your employees are out of step with your policies.” Steph Sherer, executive director of the DC-based Americans for Safe Access, told the crowd, “We need to tell Obama to lose Haag or lose California.”

Ammiano and the other mostly Democratic Party politicians who spoke tried to avoid putting Obama directly into the crosshairs of the angry activists, although he did say those executing this crackdown “are harming Obama’s chances of winning.” He also urged activists to put the pressure on politicians in Sacramento and Washington DC: “We need to be a voice in reshaping what’s happened in these last few months.”

Ammiano said the crackdown “empowers the cartels and the people who use violence,” contrasting that with San Francisco’s civilized approach to regulating marijuana.

“We in San Francisco have been a model for how to regulate this industry and we have been successful. We are not going to let the federal government interfere with our rights in this city,” Sup. David Campos told the crowd.

Cathy Smith, the founder of HopeNet, who was still reeling from watching her club gutted and shuttered the day before, also sounded an angry and defiant tone, urging supporters to make their voices heard by Haag and others.

“Everybody that’s here needs to go up to this evil woman’s office tomorrow and tell them what we think,” Smith said.

The general feeling was that if the feds can target model clubs like HopeNet and Vapor Room –- which had deep community roots and generous compassionate care programs for low-income patients -– then all clubs are in danger.

“I’m very upset that we’re losing two great medical marijuana dispensaries where patients could medicate on site,” said David Goldman, a local ASA activist and member of the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force, noting how important that is for patients who live in apartments that ban smoking.

HopeNet and Vapor Room were some of the only dispensaries in town where smoking was allowed on site, because they were more than 1,000 feet from schools, playgrounds, or day care facilities, the city’s standard. Bhatia said that’s a very strict standard in a city as dense as San Francisco, which is why only four clubs ever met it.

Yet the feds saw things differently, ostensibly targeting HopeNet because a small private school opened two blocks away last year, and the Vapor Room because the feds didn’t use the city’s standard of being more than 1,000 feet from the playground at Duboce Park, instead deciding the dispensary was a community menace because it was a little under 1,000 feet from that dog-friendly park’s nearest patch of grass.

LAST DAYS

Vapor Room founder Martin Olive was a bundle of complicated emotions on the club’s last day in business (it will still operates as delivery-only, just like HopeNet, Medithrive, and a few other shuttered clubs have done). Initially, he didn’t want to talk to us: “I’m trying to keep a lower profile because it’s scary out there now.”

But he slowly opened up and tried to describe the feeling of watching his proudest accomplishment so rapidly undone by the one-two punch of a letter from the merchant services company cutting off credit card access (just like every dispensary in the city, returning pot sales to a cash-only status) followed days later by Haag’s shut-down letter.

“It’s complicated emotions that I’m feeling -– let down, confused. At the end of the day, I don’t understand why this is happening,” Olive said. “It’s a community tragedy, it really is.”

Vapor Room was a welcoming gathering place for its members and a supporter of a variety of community events and causes.

“I’ve always treated this as if it were just a nice coffee house. I’m not an outlaw,” Olive said. “I almost forgot I was breaking federal law. It was so normal, so legitimate.”

In fact, some club owners say their establishments helped clean up rough streets. “We took care of the entire block. Before us, it was all dealers, so there’s a safety issue,” HopeNet’s Smith told me as the once-welcoming club on 9th Street near Howard was reduced to bare walls.

Patients were also feeling the pain, including a 48-year-old ex-con who said he was paroled two years ago after serving 25 years in prison for attempted murder. “I have anger issues, big time. The only thing that keeps me calm and quiet and not blowing up is medical marijuana,” he told us, seething, before praising HopeNet’s “homelike environment” and supportive community. “It’s important to sit and relax in an environment that is comfortable and safe. All this is doing is pushing us into the streets.”

DRIVEN UNDERGROUND

Before going through his latest official misconduct battles and fighting to return to his job as the elected sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi was the District 5 supervisor who sponsored the creation of the city’s medical marijuana regulatory system, the product of a long and arduous legislative process.

“We developed the system out of stark necessity because neither local government nor state government gave a roadmap to the dispensaries,” Mirkarimi said. “Prop. 215 legalized medical marijuana, but there were no rules around it.”

After an intensely collaborative process that lasted more than a year, the city in 2005 adopted a process for licensing dispensaries that balanced the needs of this nascent industry with concerns by police, patients, disability rights activists, neighborhood groups, and health officials. Mirkarimi said that maybe it’s time for city officials to consider an idea he floated a few years ago of having the city itself directly distribute medical marijuana through General Hospital.

“I still think that’s a good idea, particularly if the feds are going to force medical marijuana dispensaries back into the dark ages.” For all his praise of the city’s dispensaries, Dr. Bhatia will admit that the industry still needed better oversight -– dealing with issues such as standards for growing and transporting cannabis, fiscal transparency, and potency and dosage standards –- but the federal crackdown has scuttled his efforts to expand the city’s regulatory system.

“This DEA action stops us from making progress on the regulation of clubs that we need to make,” Bhatia said. “There are lots of issues, but we had just finished getting the clubs into their housing.” Now the industry is being driven back underground.

Ironically, Haag and other federal officials have accused dispensary operators of profiteering, which they’ll certainly be more free to do now that local officials have lost their leverage to begin regulating the finances of the supposedly nonprofit patient collectives that officially operate each dispensary.

“That was one of the areas that we never developed the tools or capacity to look at,” said Bhatia, who proposed more transparent record-keeping by dispensaries last year, only to have the operators express concern about how the feds might use that information, which turned out to be an understandable fear.

Reports, rally, and hearing call for more public benefits from nonprofit hospital chains

Sasha Cuttler
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Reports, rally, and hearing call for more public benefits from nonprofit hospital chains

A rally and legislative hearing in Sacramento tomorrow (Wed/15) will highlight how little community benefits and charity care large nonprofit healthcare corporations offer despite their tax-exempt status. At the center of that critical spotlight is Sutter Health, the healthcare behemoth that owns California Pacific Medical Center and is locked in a high-stakes standoff with the city over whether to rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital in exchange for approval of a massive luxury hospital on Cathedral Hill.

Last year, we reported on a local study that found CPMC provided far less charity care and other community benefits than any other healthcare provider in the city, despite its tax-exempt status and extraction of $744 million in profits from San Francisco between 2006-2010. CPMC reported $189 million in profits for its San Francisco operations last year, and that’s expected increase sharply if Cathedral Hill Hospital is built.

Last week, the California State Auditor issued a scathing report – based on investigating four nonprofit California hospitals, including St. Luke’s – calling for stronger demands on these supposedly nonprofit corporations. Among its findings were “The amounts of community benefits the hospitals provide cannot be used to justify their tax-exempt status” and “Neither federal nor state law requires nonprofit hospitals to deliver specific amounts of community benefits for hospitals to quality for tax-exempt status.”

Tomorrow’s hearing by the California Senate Select Committee on Charity Care and Nonprofit Hospitals, and a rally afterward by the California Nurses Association, will spotlight those problems and call for tougher new standards. CNA’s research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, will also unveil a new report that defines the problem and reinforces the need for reform.

“These hospital chains are exploiting their nonprofit status to enjoy enormous tax benefits while returning very little to their communities,” CNA spokesperson Chuck Idelson told the Guardian.

He said the problem began with the “corporatization of health care” in the late-’80s, when deregulation and corporate-friendly legislative changes encouraged the consolidation of health providers and lowering of public accountability standards, coupled with a corporate culture that began providing excessive pay and benefits to executives.

“There used to be better standards, certainly at the federal level, with what they were required to do to maintain nonprofit status,” Idelson said. “But the distinctions of for-profit and not-for-profit has become blurred and the burden is falling of public hospitals like SF General Hospital.”

Nonetheless, Sutter/CPMC continues its aggressive tact with San Francisco city officials, refusing to offer firm guarantees that St. Luke’s – which serves much of the city’s low-income population, second only to General, which would be overwhelmed if St. Luke’s closes – will remain open for at least 20 years and promising only modest improvements in its charity care standards. Despite taunts from Sutter spokespersons that city officials are endangering public safety by stalling the rebuild of St. Luke’s, which isn’t seismically sound, the Board of Supervisors refused to approve the lucrative development agreement last month, delaying consideration until after the election in November in the hopes that CPMC will offer better guarantees and community benefits.

“It’s an extremely timely issue for San Francisco,” Idelson said tomorrow’s hearing (which is from 10am to noon in Room 3191 of the State Capitol) and rally (from 12:15-1pm on the Capitol’s North Steps).

Davis snags a trio of top progressive endorsements

Sasha Cuttler
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Davis snags a trio of top progressive endorsements

District 5 supervisorial candidate Julian Davis is emerging as the progressive standard-bearer in that competitive race after today receiving the endorsements of a trio of top progressive politicians: Sups. John Avalos and David Campos and attorney Matt Gonzalez, the former board president, mayoral candidate, and D5 supervisor.

Gonzalez had endorsed appointed incumbent Sup. Christina Olague – who he appointed to the Planning Commission in 2004 – but he withdrew that endorsement last month after being frustrated by a series of actions in which she sided with Mayor Ed Lee, moderates, and developers over her longtime progressive colleagues and constituents.

Avalos and Gonzalez are endorsing just Davis, at least for now, while Campos added to his early endorsement of Olague by today endorsing Davis and John Rizzo, who had earlier snagged the other prized progressive endorsement by winning the support of Assembly member Tom Ammiano.

Davis, who was already endorsed by former supervisor and local Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, said he’s thrilled with today’s triple endorsement. While some have questioned his anemic fundraising so far, raising less than $10,000 as of June 30, Davis notes that he had been in the race for less than a month before that deadline and that he expects to have more than $150,000 to get his message out.

“What these endorsements signal is a confidence from San Francisco’s progressive leaders, not only in the vision of this campaign, but in our capacity to win,” Davis told us.

Avalos said that he has confidence in Davis’ values, experience, and his ability to run a strong race that will help to reinvigorate the progressive movement.

“Julian is a solid candidate who has been around for years on a number of progressive causes. Running for mayor, I was impressed with his connection to neighborhood issues ranging from small business development to urban cycling and youth and worker rights. His campaign has a good buzz about it, one that I expect will resonate with District 5 residents,” Avalos told us.

Olague faces her challengers during first D5 debate

Sasha Cuttler
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Olague faces her challengers during first D5 debate

Tonight’s inaugural District 5 supervisorial debate will be a key test for Sup. Christina Olague – who has fallen from favor with many progressives after a series of bad votes and prickly or evasive interactions with one-time allies – and a test for the rival candidates who are seeking to become the main progressive champion in one of the city’s most leftist districts.

The elected incumbents on the Board of Supervisors have ended up with surprisingly easy paths to reelection [8/9 UPDATE: with the exception of Eric Mar in D1], leaving D5 – as well as conservative District 7, where FX Crowley, Norman Yee, and Michael Garcia are part of a competitive field seeking to replace termed out Sup. Sean Elsbernd – as the race to watch this year.

Olague has been trying to execute a tough balancing act between the progressive community that she’s long identified with and the moderates she began courting last year with her early support for Mayor Ed Lee, who returned the favor and appointed her to serve the final year of Ross Mirkarimi’s D5 term. But by most accounts, she hasn’t executed the feat well, usually siding with Lee on key votes, but doing so in a waffling way that has frustrated both sides.

Progressive candidates such as Julian Davis and John Rizzo will have plenty of fodder with which to attack Olague as a turncoat, including her votes on the 8 Washington project and Michael Antonini, her strange antics on repealing ranked-choice voting, and her close ties to power brokers such as Rose Pak, who hosted a fundraiser that provided more than half of the $81,333 Olague has raised this year, much of it from developers and other interests outside of D5.

Matt Gonzalez – the former D5 supervisor, board president (from where he appointed Olague to the Planning Commission), and mayoral candidate – was so frustrated with Olague that he withdrew his endorsement of her last month, a decision that her other progressive endorsers are also said to be mulling.

With Mirkarimi tarnished by his ongoing official misconduct probe, the endorsement of Gonzalez could be the most significant in this race, and he told us that he plans to make a decision by Friday, the deadline for submission of ballot statements and a point at which we may hear about other changed or dual endorsements from prominent progressives. Other key nods in the race so far have been Aaron Peskin endorsing Davis and Tom Ammiano endorsing Rizzo, two candidates each vying to become the favorite of the left, with Thea Selby, Hope Johnson, and Andrew Resignato also courting support from the left.

Yet so far, the strongest challenge of Olague seems to be coming from her right, with moderate London Breed leading the fundraising battle with $85,461 as of late June 30, including the maximum $500 donation from venture capitalist Ron Conway – the main fundraiser behind Lee’s election last year – which may be a sign that Olague’s support among moderates is also soft.

Olague may be trying to get back in good with the progressives, last week introducing pro-tenant legislation sought by the San Francisco Tenants Union. But impressions have formed and the pressure is now on, and so far Olague – who didn’t answer our calls seeking comment, another troubling trend – hasn’t performed well in public appearances, mangling organizations’ names and generally not winning over her audiences.

Will Olague step up now that the campaign in entering its public phase? Will another candidate catch fire with progressives? Find out tonight from 6-7:30pm at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street. It’s sponsored by the District 5 Democratic Club, the D5 Neighborhood Action Committee and the Wigg Party.

Or if you miss it, catch the next one on Tuesday, sponsored by the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, starting at 7pm in the Eric Quezada Center, 518 Valencia Street.

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