Steven T. Jones

Nickel and dimed in SF

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By Steven T. Jones

On the gubernatorial campaign trail, Mayor Gavin Newsom has been touting the claim that he balanced city’s budget without any tax increases – not usually something liberals (which Newsom sometimes claims to be) generally boast about, particularly when it causes mass layoffs and service reductions – but there’s a plethora of fee increases.

Just look at tomorrow’s Board of Supervisors agenda, which includes 17 different increases in various fees and permit costs proposed by Newsom. So you’ll pay more if you need medical care, throw a street fair, use a city field, smoke cigarettes, sell art on the street, have a kid in an after-school program, or a number of other activities. The mayor’s proposed budget hiked fees by 41 percent.

But if you’re a rich out-of-town corporation, or wealthy property owner, or some other constituency that Newsom wants to protect from the dreaded T-word, don’t worry. He’s got your back.

Assessing the city budget deal

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By Steven T. Jones

Progressives aren’t feeling much joy over the city budget deal that was cut yesterday between Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sups. David Chiu and John Avalos (respectively the board president and chair of the Budget Committee), and that’s not just because it gave the gubernatorial candidate the chance to shamelessly crow, “The contrast is stark, isn’t it? In Sacramento, it’s a state of emergency. In San Francisco, a budget deal.”

It’s true that the deal to restore $43.7 million in Newsom-proposed cuts – more so-called “add-backs” than a Board of Supervisors has ever made to a mayor’s budget — was a real compromise, not coincidentally about half of what the board’s progressive majority was looking for, and it averted bloody budget standoff that neither side wanted.

But the cuts to progressive priorities are still deep and Newsom’s wasteful pet projects and taxpayer-funded political operation remain intact (Paul Hogarth has a good analysis of the numbers here). And the whole episode just feels a little like it was scripted by Team Newsom, starting on June 1 when the mayor unveiled his budget and said, “I count on you to add back a lot of the things I don’t want to see cut.”

Of course, that was followed by an aggressive butting of heads: the police and fire unions slammed the rookie supervisorial leaders hard, even running a sound truck through Avalos’ neighborhood calling for his recall, which progressive activists and union leaders responded to with increasingly confrontational tactics, even blocking Newsom’s Pride Parade vehicle with a “die-in.”

Ultimately, the clashes led to a compromise that Avalos described to us as: “It’s as good as we could possibly get.”

NYT Mag takes on Cali and The Gav

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By Steven T. Jones
newsom.jpg
It’s fitting that the just-posted New York Times Magazine profile on how colorfully fucked-up California is right now leads with our own Mayor Gavin Newsom, both with his words and image.

The most telling paragraph is the second one, describing Newsom’s initial confusion over an emergency call button on his desk: “Newsom says he has not had occasion to press the button since, although the mayor admits he is tempted to whenever meetings drag on or when reporters ask him annoying questions or when he becomes bored, something that happens easily.”

There are mountains of things to say about all this – from discussing Newsom’s carefully crafted media image to pushing back on the latest East Coast “wow, isn’t California weird” profile – but for now, just give this long piece a read and feel free to discuss. I was already working on another Newsom post for later in the day, and this is just one of many interesting items that have popped up in the last strange week.

The nativists are restless

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news@sfbg.com

The comments sections of the Guardian‘s Politics blog and the San Francisco Chronicle‘s SFGate Web site have been lit up over the past week with angry (and sometimes overtly racist) denunciations of Latino immigrants, triggered by the latest Chronicle stories challenging San Francisco’s Sanctuary City policies and by Guardian revelations that Chronicle writer Jaxon Van Derkeken accepted an award and substantial cash payment from a controversial nativist group.

While Van Derbeken, two Chronicle editors interviewed by the Guardian, and other critics of San Francisco’s longstanding policy of not notifying federal authorities about the arrests of undocumented immigrants have denied trying to stir up nativist furor, the tone and content of many of these comments seems to indicate they’ve done exactly that.

The saga began June 19 when we published “Chronicle accepts award and cash from anti-immigrant group” on our Politics blog. The story began: “San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken recently accepted an award and cash prize (he refuses to say how much) from the Center for Immigration Studies — which a Southern Poverty Law Center report in February 2009 criticized for its overtly racist roots and extreme anti-immigrant agenda — for his controversial articles on San Francisco’s Sanctuary City policies.

“CIS paid for Van Derbeken to accept the award at the National Press Club and conservative Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders to introduce him earlier this month, an appearance they used to make derogatory comments about San Francisco, its values, and local immigrant rights activists, while saying little to rebuke the group for stirring up hateful nativist furor around what has become perhaps the country’s most divisive issue.”

Van Derbeken would only address the issue by e-mail, sending us two terse replies to our inquiry and refusing to answer most of our questions, including much how cash he received for a prize that we discovered paid $1,000 in 2001 (the complete e-mail exchange is include in our post).

“No one should mistake their decision to endorse my work for my endorsement of theirs,” was Van Derbeken’s most substantive comment, although he refused to offer an opinion on CIS or the SPLC report, which he didn’t read until after accepting the award. “I haven’t drawn any conclusions about it.”

CIS executive director Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal (2008, Sentinel), responded to our inquires with an e-mail blaming the “jihad against dissent from the elite consensus for open borders” and referring to a column he wrote for National Review Online criticizing SPLC’s fundraising.

But in the past, Krikorian has called for the federal government to cut off funding to San Francisco and even prosecute local elected officials, writing in his CIS blog, “Local neutrality on immigration is no longer possible. Every jurisdiction in the country has a choice to make: Either buttress federal efforts at immigration control or subvert them. San Francisco has chosen the second option. It should now learn the consequences.”

We did phone interviews with Van Derbeken’s editors, Managing Editor Steve Proctor and Assistant Managing Editor Ken Conner, who both defended the stories and the decision to accept the award. Neither would reveal how much cash was involved, and neither would admit that it represented validating a group that recently has been vying for mainstream legitimacy.

“All issues have proponents and opponents,” Proctor told us, equating the award to those given for education and legal affairs reporting and denying that the immigration issue is more divisive and controversial. “At the end of the day, it isn’t about this group but about Jaxon’s stories,” Conner told us.

Those stories continued in high-profile fashion a few days later as Van Derbeken essentially rewrote a June 21 Los Angeles Times scoop about how San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris allowed a half-dozen undocumented immigrants to enroll in a rehabilitation program rather than turning them over to the feds. The details became front-page lead news stories in the Chronicle on June 22 and 23.

Local immigrant rights activists criticized the Chronicle stories and the paper’s decision to accept the CIS award and money.

“When I read these kind of stories that lead us down a dark path and play on people’s fears and paint immigrants with a broad brush — as a threat, as criminals, as dangerous to the community — I do think that there are anti-immigrant nativist centers egging on reporters like Jaxon down this dark path by giving him cash awards,” Phil Hwang, a staff attorney for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, told us. “It’s part of the strategy these anti-immigrant groups are employing. It’s why they created this award. And if you look at who founded CIS and their vision, it’s clear that they believe America is under threat from non-white immigrants,”

Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus, whom Van Derbeken mentioned by name in his CIS award speech, said she is worried this latest round would weaken Harris’ support for Sanctuary City policies. That’s what happened to Mayor Gavin Newsom last fall, when Van Derbeken wrote the stories CIS honored.

“I’d hate to see another series of anti-immigrant scapegoating being used to make hasty policy decisions that violate the rights of immigrants, tear apart families, and increase the state of terror in immigrant communities,” Chan told us.

Harris, who is running for state attorney general, defended her decision to let undocumented immigrants complete the Back on Track program after their presence was brought to her attention, but has since changed the policy to bar them from enrolling. “No innovative initiative will ever be created without some unanticipated flaws to be fixed along the way, but this must not stop us from tackling tough problems with smart solutions,” she said in a prepared statement.

“These are tough economic times,” Hwang added. “People are very nervous about their jobs. And that is often when the [anti-immigrant] rhetoric ramps up.”

The Chronicle writer and editors and Krikorian stopped responding to Guardian inquiries. But the blogs were lit up with comments — hundreds of them from around the country at the bottom of Van Derbeken’s latest stories — that had some disturbing themes, accusations, and suggestions. They indicate that the radical nativists are using this issue — and the Chron‘s spin on it — to promote a dangerous agenda.

Here’s a small sampling:

•<\!s> “Illegal aliens are like a plague.”

•<\!s> “Kick out all Illegals, return the city to its rightful owners”

•<\!s> “For God’s sake, STOP pandering to the ILLEGAL ALIENS and get rid of them!”

•<\!s> “Anyone caught crossing the border illegally should be shot as a spy.”

•<\!s> “The border ought to be land mined.”

•<\!s> “What is this sham that diversity is great? It is tearing this country apart.”

Such sentiments — which we usually counter on the Guardian Politics blog — were met with silence by Van Derbeken.

Turning point

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MORE ON SFBG.COM

>>Deconstructing the politics of parking in San Francisco

>>Safer streets for cyclists cause growing pains for motorists

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco has been a "transit-first" city since 1973, when the Board of Supervisors first adopted the policy of officially promoting public transit, pedestrians, and bicycles over the automobile. But the label has really been in name only — until this year.

Through an unusual confluence of policy initiatives that have been moving forward for several years, San Francisco is finally about to have a serious discussion about the automobile and its impacts. And parking policies are being used as the main tool to reduce traffic congestion, better set development impact fees, increase city revenue, and promote alternatives to the automobile.

"Our parking requirements need to be revised to support this [transit-first] policy by limiting parking supply — the single greatest incentive to drive — where transit and other modes are viable alternatives," reads the city’s Better Neighborhoods Plan.

While the very notion of deliberately limiting parking will likely be met with howls of protest by many drivers — indeed, urban planners already acknowledge that it’s probably not politically feasible to make drivers pay for their full impacts — they also say it’s the only way to decrease the over-dependence on the automobile.

"Without limiting parking, people will choose an auto-oriented lifestyle and continue to drive. Traffic will continue to worsen, and we will never shift the balance in favor of ways of getting around that are more effective in moving people," the plan continues.

Yet the push isn’t as dire for drivers as its stark language suggests, thanks to some innovative initiatives that could ironically make it even easier to park in some areas than it is now, in the process easing traffic congestion by eliminating the number of cars circling the block looking for parking spaces, which studies show can often account for up to one-third of the cars on the road.

DEMAND-BASED PARKING PRICES


The SF Park program is scheduled to begin later this summer in eight pilot areas, providing real-time parking data to give drivers better information on where to find spots and controlling demand with a market-based pricing system that raises rates when spots are scarce, encouraging turnover and freeing up spaces.

It is just one of many current initiatives. The city is looking at extending meter hours to nights and Sundays and adding parking meters in Golden Gate Park (those are simply revenue measures aimed at city budget deficits). Another study is examining the nexus between parking and developer impacts that could be used to charge new fees for construction. There’s also a comprehensive study of on-street parking policies that will be going before the Board of Supervisors (sitting as the San Francisco County Transportation Authority) next month after nearly five years in the works.

Yet creating more progressive parking policies requires political will, which will surely be tested in the coming months. Indeed, this year’s battle over the Municipal Transportation Authority budget — whose $128 million deficit was closed by Muni fare increases and services cuts rather than parking increases by a ratio of about 4-1, thanks to pressure from drivers and Mayor Gavin Newsom — was an early indicator of the pitfalls that exist within the politics of parking.

Using a $20 million federal traffic congestion management grant, SFMTA has spent years developing the SF Park program, approving most of the details last fall and planning to roll it out by summer’s end.

"Under-regulated on-street parking results in limited parking availability, inefficient utilization of spaces, and excess vehicular circulation," begins the San Francisco On-Street Parking Management and Pricing Study Final Report, which is headed to the Board of Supervisors next month. "This program will assess the effectiveness of using pricing and complementary strategies as a way to manage demand for parking."

The program will be rolled out in eight areas, coordinating parking information in more than 6,000 street spaces and 20 city-owned parking garages, and using that information to adjust parking rates — charging more when spots are scarce and for additional hours — to try to achieve a parking occupancy rate of about 85 percent.

"An on-street parking occupancy of 85 percent has been demonstrated by parking experts … as the benchmark for the practical capacity of on-street parking. At 85 percent occupancy, approximately one available space is expected per block, thus limiting the cruising phenomenon and generally assuring the availability of a space," the study reads.

SFMTA spokesperson Judson True called SF Park "the future of parking management, adding that "we are taking a big bite of the parking management pie with SF Park, which is the most advanced parking management system of any U.S. city."

THE TRUE COST OF CARS


It’s just the latest work product from transportation planners that have spent years behind-the-scenes developing programs to deal with the city’s over-reliance on the automobiles. "It’s all part of a strategy of using parking as a demand management strategy," said Zabe Bent, a planner with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

She is working on the parking policies, as well as a proposal to charge motorists a congestion fee for driving into the downtown, which comes before the Board of Supervisors this fall (although implementation is probably at least three years away).

Bent said city officials are working on a number of fronts to shore up San Francisco’s "transit-first" status and prepare for growth in what is already one of the country’s most congested cities. So some of the decisions coming up are bound to be tough.

"It’s a tradeoff we need to make to achieve our goals," she said, noting that the central question transportation planners are wrestling with is, "How do we achieve a more sustainable growth pattern?"

Such noble intentions can always get hung up on politics, and the ever-present question of how to pay for it during an era of fiscal crisis. So it appears the city may have to get creative with funding its new approach to parking.

Alica John-Baptiste, the assistant planning director overseeing the parking impact fee study, said that while it does appear to be a big year for new parking policies, "this conversation has been underway for a number of years. A lot of the discussions we’ve had are now being studied."

Most recently it was the citizens committee that developed the Market-Octavia Plan — one of the first to cap how much parking developers may build along with the projects — that sought guidance about what the city could legally do to recover the full costs associated with automobiles.

"There were a bunch of questions that came up about parking as an issue," she said of the Market-Octavia process. So the Planning Department and other city agencies began to explore the cost of parking as part of the city’s update of the Transit Impact Fee that is charged to new development, with the idea of expanding that to include impacts to all modes of transportation.

"We are looking at parking as a land use and its impact to the [transportation] system," she continued. "This is a city that really wants to support other modes than just transit."

The contract for that parking nexus study was awarded to Cambridge Systematics earlier this month with initial recommendations expected by the end of the year. That study is expected to show that developers and drivers don’t come anywhere near paying for the full cost of the automobile to San Francisco. "These nexus studies usually suggest a much higher fee rate than is feasible to provide," she said.

In other words, drivers and developers would freak out if asked to pay for their full impacts, arguing that that doing so would stifle development, hurt the economy, punish those who need cars, etc. So the fees will likely be set lower than needed to cover the city’s costs.

Even in the short-term, simply extending meter hours into the evenings — as SFMTA is now studying to help the city deal with its budget deficit — is likely to trigger a pitched battle between progressive supervisors and politicians who side with some merchant groups that consider parking sacrosanct.
David Heller, president of the Greater Geary Merchants Association, will be one of those leading the charge. By way of argument, he criticized San Francisco as "a very business-unfriendly city" compared to competitors like Colma and Burlingame and laid out this scenario: "After 6 p.m., there are no power lunches going on. People want to relax. Imagine you sit down to a nice dinner. You’ve got your wine and are enjoying your appetizer and in the middle of your meal, you have to get up and feed the meter. When you return, the ambiance has been lost. What are the chances you’ll return to that restaurant?"
And so it goes with the politics of parking, where pressing realities clash with visceral reactions, driver prerogatives (such as the "right" to feed the meter, which actually isn’t legal), and other distracting entitlement issues.
Gabriella Poccia and Rachel Buhner contributed to this report.

———–

PARKING BY NUMBERS


Number of on-street parking spaces in SF: 320,000

Number these spaces that have meters: 24,000

Total parking spaces in San Francisco: 603,000

Number of cars and trucks registered in SF: 441,653

Annual revenue from meters and city-owned garages: $64.5 million

Annual revenue from parking citations: $90 million

Number of street spaces in 8 SF Park pilot zones: 6,000

Hourly meter rates in the zones, depending on demand: 25 cents to $6

Hourly garage rates in the zones, depending on demand: $1 to $10

Number of residential parking permits issued: 89,271

Cost of purchasing an on-street residential parking permit: $74 per year

Number of temporary permits: 2,867

Annual revenue from residential parking permits: $5.7 million
Cost of purchasing SF parking on Craiglist: $100 to $500 per month
Annual city revenue if residential permits were market-based: $320 million

Renters demand ideas from Newsom

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By Megan Rawlins

As expected, Mayor Gavin Newsom has promised to veto the renter relief and protection legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors at last week’s meeting. And in response, renters will rally at the steps of City Hall at noon on Tuesday to demand that Newsom offer some alternative if he indeed kills the renters’ package.

The legislation, in descending order of controversy, suspended rent increases that would exceed one-third of a tenant’s income for those who had recently lost a job, had their wages decreased by at least 20 percent, or derived their income solely from government assistance; allowed the addition of a roommate without a resulting rent increase, and amended rent-banking rules to cap rent hikes at 8 percent annually.

Authored by Sup. Chris Daly, the changes are intended to address the precarious position of San Francisco renters, who constitute two-thirds of the city’s population.

BART strikes looms

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By Wendi Jonassen
bart_simpson.jpg
BART riders may need to come up with other modes of transportation next week.

A strike by BART employees threatens to shut the system down on Tuesday after weeks of heated labor contract negotiations have gotten nowhere.

At midnight on June 30, BART’s four-year labor contract with five different unions will expire. Workers threaten to strike, effectively shutting down BART and disrupting commutes for thousands as they fight to negotiate a 3 percent increase in pay to accommodate cost of living and better benefits.

But BART management isn’t budging. It wants to balance the $250 million budget deficit by reducing payroll, which its says accounts for 75 percent of the budget, and increasing fares in July and December. BART also wants to work out some outdated work procedures that they say cost time and money.

Bike projects approved in SF

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By Steven T. Jones

After almost three years of no bicycle improvements in San Francisco — the result of a court injunction imposed because the city’s Bike Plan wasn’t submitted to proper environmental review — city officials have taken a pair of actions that will likely result in the biggest bicycling boom in the city’s history.

Last night, the Bike Plan’s new Environmental Impact Report was approved by the Planning Commission, and this afternoon, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission board unanimously approved the plan and 45 new bicycle projects around the city (delaying only the 2nd Street bike lanes for further study and discussion). Now, once any appeals play out, city officials will be able to return to court later this summer to get the injunction removed and construction on new lanes, racks, and other improvements should begin this fall.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, other officials, and bike advocates are right now holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall. Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe, who has been covering the hearings, is there and will offer a full report later on this blog and in Wednesday’s Guardian.

UN conference on global crisis undercut by G20 indifference

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By Nick Buxton
Editor’s Note: Buxton is in New York covering the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development for the Guardian.

Maybe I was being a naïve activist, but I thought I would be covering an important and consequential event. The world is facing a devastating economic crisis, accompanied by a toxic mix of crises of climate chaos, food prices and even flu outbreaks, and here was chance for a smart, effective response to these pressing and interconnected issues.

The international community had agreed back in November 2008 to develop a coordinated international response to an unprecedented global crisis – and to present its plan in summer 2009. Yet, here I am on the second day of that conference, and for the press it is as if the meeting did not exist.

Until Michael Jackson’s death, the latest dull exploits of US celebrity misfits Jon and Kate – famous mainly for their ability to reproduce- were the only stories staring out at me on most newspaper front pages. So I decided to do some investigation.

Board helps renters, but Newsom veto looms

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By Megan Rawlins

Progressives on the Board of Supervisors yesterday passed four ordinances aimed at helping renters, which make up about two-thirds of San Francisco residents, but the 6-4 margin of approval won’t be enough to overcome a threatened veto by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Sups. Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Sean Elsbernd, and Michela Alioto-Pier voted against the effort to provide financial relief to renters, while Sup. Sophie Maxwell abstained due to a conflict of interest involving her ownership of renter units.

“The federal government has spent significant money on homeowners who are struggling in this crisis, but hasn’t address renters,” said Sup. Chris Daly, who authored the measure. “There is a place for local government to help these people, the majority of San Franciscans.”

Nativists revive Willie Horton tactic

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By Steven T. Jones
250px-HortonWillie.jpg
As the Chronicle once again pushes its anti-immigrant crusade with another front-page, above-the-fold story – clearly trying to badger District Attorney Kamala Harris into joining their descent into raw nativism – the central argument seems to be a flashback to another episode of racist-tinged political manipulation.

Conservative SF Examiner columnist Ken Garcia yesterday wrote that the issue comes down to two words: Edwin Ramos. He is the undocumented immigrant accused of a San Francisco murder, with the implication being that the murder wouldn’t have happened if he and his ilk had been deported. That argument also underlies the latest alleged outrage, because Alexander Izaguirre also committed a crime instead of being deported or kept in prison on a minor drug charge.

But I think the latest nativist campaign comes down to another two words: Willie Horton. He was the criminal that Republicans used in TV ads to paint 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis as soft-on-crime, an underhanded tactic that played heavily to racist fears and stereotypes.

Rally and resolution support Iran’s reformers

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Story and photos by Megan Rawlins
ross.jpg
Sup. Ross Mirkarimi addresses a pro-democracy rally of Iranian-Americans and their supporters.

In a sea of people on the steps of City Hall yesterday, there were clusters of green, the color of the protest movement in Iran: green shirts, green scarves, green ribbons, green pants. Small children, little old men, young men and women with their parents and grandparents were frantically waving signs. Chants alternated between “Freedom for Iran” and “Yes to democracy. No to theocracy.”

The crowd quieted quickly when people began to speak, but frequently broke in with cheers or burst of applause. This gathering of the local Iranian-American community was galvanized by frustration, outrage and sadness over what many termed the human rights violations that have been part of the fall-out from the recent, contested Iranian election.

Many carried signs or spoke to remember a young student named Neda Agha-Soltan, reportedly shot dead in the streets of Tehran Saturday evening. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who organized the press conference and resulting demonstration and is Iranian-American, assured those gathered that her death would not be in vain.

Is SF privatizing legal defense for the poor?

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By Tim Redmond
Adachi_Head_Shot3.jpg
SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi

The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office is facing a budget cut of about $1.9 million — small change compared to the city’s half-billion deficit. But the reduction comes at the same time as the San Francisco Superior Court is budgeting an additional $1.2 million for handling cases that the public defender can’t.

And that’s led to some serious intrigue in the Hall of Justice. Among other things, Public Defender Jeff Adachi has charged that the presiding judge of the Superior Court, James McBride, is trying to take all of the misdemeanor cases away from the PD’s office and give them to private defense lawyers.

Like most privatization schemes, this one would either save the city money or cost money, depending on who’s doing the figures. But it would mark a dramatic change in the way San Francisco provides legal defense for indigent people.

Chronicle continues anti-immigrant crusade

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By Steven T. Jones

Jaxon Van Derbeken and the San Francisco Chronicle continued their crusade against undocumented immigrants today, expecting elected officials in San Francisco to be accountable to federal immigration authorities while resisting accountability for their own unethical collusion with a controversial anti-immigrant group.

At issue is a Los Angeles Times story about how District Attorney Kamala Harris – who is running for attorney general, a fact that likely played a role in the hit piece – allowed a half-dozen undocumented immigrants to enroll in a rehabilitation program rather than turning them over to the feds. The Chronicle essentially rewrote the Times story under Van Derbeken’s byline and ran it as its splashy lead news story.

Harris told the Times that it’s not her job to enforce federal immigration policies, a stand that has been San Francisco’s official Sanctuary City policy since the ‘80s when Dianne Feinstein was mayor. But Van Derbeken and anti-immigrant groups like the Center for Immigration Studies – which recently gave Van Derbeken an award and large cash payout for his work on the issue – have been pushing for more local cooperation with federal immigration crackdowns.

The Chronicle has refused to say how much money Van Derbeken received for an award that was worth $1,000 a few years ago (CIS has also refused to disclose the figure despite our direct questions), or to address the validation of CIS’s controversial views that acceptance of the award represents, or to offer a position on CIS’s demands and quest for mainstream legitimacy, or to explain or apologize for the derogatory comments that Van Derbeken and conservative Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders made about San Francisco and immigrant rights activists during his acceptance speech earlier this month.

While Van Derbeken did briefly raise the concern during his speech that innocent San Francisco residents could get deported under federal immigration policies, he has resisted accepting the immigrant rights community’s call for due process to play out before deporting local residents (often to a country they know little about and where they have no support system) and dividing up families in order to satisfy the increasingly vitriolic demands of nativist groups.

The Chronicle and the angry nativists

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By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco Chronicle editors continue to defend their decision to let reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken accept an award and large cash payout from the Center for Immigration Studies, which pushes an extreme position cracking down on immigrants, even though the Guardian has learned that the payout was $1,000 in 2001, which is extremely high for a journalism contest, most of which have no cash award and are judged by journalists based on professional standards.

Van Derbeken (who still hasn’t responded to my follow-up questions) and the editors (Managing Editor Stephen Proctor and Assistant Managing Editor Ken Conner) continue to refuse to answer detailed questions about whether the size of the award compromises accepted journalistic standards and whether the acceptance of it legitimizes CIS’s effort to make its extreme position more acceptable to mainstream audiences and politicians.

“All issues have proponents and opponents,” Proctor told us, equating the award to those given for education and legal affairs reporting and denying that the immigration issue is more divisive and controversial.

Meanwhile, CIS’s Mark Krikorian responded to our request for comment by criticizing his critics as a “jihad against dissent from the elite consensus for open borders” and sending us this link to a National Review article that he wrote addressing the Southern Poverty Law Center report labeling CIS an extremist organization.

Neither Krikorian nor anyone from the Chronicle has responded to our direct questions about how much cash Van Derbeken received from the CIS, although we found an application for the 2001 award that listed the amount as $1,000.

Villaraigosa to announce intentions

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By Steven T. Jones

CNN reports that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will in just a couple hours announce whether he plans to run for governor against Gavin Newsom, who really needs some high-profile opponents to keep him honest. So, on behalf of the Guardian, let me just offer this last-minute encouragement: Run, Antonio, run!

Chronicle accepts award and cash from anti-immigrant group

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By Steven T. Jones and Sarah Phelan

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken recently accepted an award and cash prize (he refuses to say how much) from the Center for Immigration Studies – which a Southern Poverty Law Center report in February 2009 criticized for its overtly racist roots and extreme anti-immigrant agenda – for his controversial articles on San Francisco’s Sanctuary City policies.

CIS paid for Van Derbeken to accept the award at the National Press Club and conservative Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders to introduce him earlier this month, an appearance they used to make derogatory comments about San Francisco, its values, and local immigrant rights activists, while saying little to rebuke the group for stirring up hateful nativist furor around what has become perhaps the country’s most divisive issue.

Van Derbeken and Ken Conner, the Chron’s assistant managing editor for news (who the reporter consulted before accepting the award), told the Guardian that they see nothing wrong with accepting the award and they don’t see it as validating the views of a group that has been desperately seeking mainstream credibility with which to push its anti-immigrant agenda.

“No one should mistake their decision to endorse my work for my endorsement of theirs,” Van Derbeken wrote via e-mail in response to questions, although he wouldn’t offer an opinion on the CIS agenda. He said he was unaware of the SPLC report when he accepted the award, and now that he’s seen it, he wrote, “I haven’t drawn any conclusions about it.”

Conner also dismissed concerns that accepting the award and its cash supplement amounts to validating the group and letting it benefit from the Chronicle name. “We don’t think that’s true. They gave us this award. We didn’t seek it,” Conner told us.

Vote on resolution to drop SF8 charges is postponed

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By C. Nellie Nelson

In the face of police officers already angry about proposed budget cuts, the Board of Supervisors this week delayed consideration of a resolution supporting the San Francisco 8 and urging charges to be dropped.

Last week, we reported that the Board of Supervisors’ Government Audit and Oversight Committee would hear a resolution urging the state attorney general to drop charges against the SF8, a group that’s now seven African-American men accused in the killing of a San Francisco Police Department sergeant 38 years ago. The case had been dropped in 1975 because the court found that the confessions constituting the main evidence were elicited under torture.

The Committee heard public comment from SF8 supporters and police officers on June 11 and sent the resolution to the full board on June 16, the day when all hell broke loose in City Hall. Then on June 13, the San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial challenging the resolution and a front page story on the day of the hearing include quotes from police officials using the resolution to argue the board was anti-cop.

SF vs. the Catholics, Round One

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By Rachel Buhner

The highly anticipated showdown between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese and the San Francisco Assessor-Recorders Office came to head June 16th in the Atrium conference room located at One South Van Ness. At stake is millions of dollars in revenue to the city, and perhaps the question of whether the Catholic Church will be able to hide hundreds of millions in assets from sexual abuse victims and other litigants.

Arguing in front of the Transfer Tax Review Board, the legal counsel for both the RCA and the Assessor-Recorder’s Office presented their respective cases with minimal theatrics. However, with the city estimating the total property values of the transferred parcels ranging anywhere from $210 million to $1.25 billion, and the potential transfer tax payout to be somewhere between $3 and $15 million – on top of increased property taxes as the properties are reassessed — there was clearly at a lot at stake for both parties.

Arnold isn’t tough, he’s a coward

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By Steven T. Jones
arnold.jpg
I’ve had it with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action hero bullshit, wherein he masks his cowardly failures with a tough-talking veneer. The latest example is his campaign’s (yes, the termed out governor’s Join Arnold campaign team is still quite active) latest missive on California’s $24 billion budget deficit deadlock titled “Tough Times, Tough Choices.”

“To close California’s budget gap, the Governor has proposed deep cuts to education, public safety, and health and human services. He has also made clear his commitment to making government more efficient and to finding innovative ways to stretch taxpayer dollars. Tough choices must be made to get the state through this crisis, but if these tough choices are not made, the state will again be on the brink of insolvency,” they write.

Ending public health programs, robbing schools, closing parks, letting infrastructure deteriorate, and weakening the state’s ability to keep citizens safe isn’t tough. It’s the act of a coward, a bully beating up on the weak to appear strong while cowering before the actual tough guys. Taking on his political base and advocating higher taxes on millionaires – which this state desperately needs to do – that would be tough.

Is there hope?

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steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY They agree global warming is happening, that it’s caused by the overuse of carbon-based fuels, that its impact on the planet and its myriad life forms will be devastating, and that Congress is failing to properly address the crisis. But the environmentalist and the oil executive disagreed about the most important issue: whether there’s any hope of saving the planet from the worst impacts of climate change.

Chevron CEO David O’Reilly and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope squared off June 10 at the Hotel Nikko ballroom in San Francisco for a truly historic Commonwealth Club event titled "Drilling for Common Ground." And they did find some, including agreeing publicly to jointly lobby Congress for an energy policy that more quickly phases out coal, the worst of the fossil fuels.

But the more telling exchanges between these two giants highlighted a fundamental disagreement: can we do something about this, or are we simply fucked? And by fucked, I mean doomed to simply accept official predictions of rising seas creating a billion refugees by 2050, the extinction of a million plant and animal species, severe water shortages in California and many other regions, and an unpredictably unstable new world ravaged by severe weather and exotic diseases.

To avoid much of that (but not all — it’s already too late for that), Pope said the scientific community consensus is that we need to stop all coal burning by 2030 (unless emissions can be sequestered, which isn’t technologically possible yet) and reduce our consumption of oil and other carbon-based fuels by 90 percent by the year 2050. "You can’t meet the targets any other way," Pope said.

And he thinks that meeting those targets is not only possible, but it would help the U.S. economy. "The rapid changes in the telecommunications field were good for the economy, and a similar change in the energy field would be good for the economy," Pope said. "We have lots of options if we start moving like it’s a crisis."

But O’Reilly doesn’t think that’s possible. "Even with the best of intentions, we’re only going to get part of the way there," O’Reilly said, quickly adding, "I think we’ll be lucky if we can get 20 to 25 percent by 2050."

At a press conference after the forum, I asked the two men about the implications of only reducing our fossil fuel consumption by 20 percent. Pope cited impacts ranging from "Florida will be a lot smaller" to severe water rationing in San Francisco. "It’s not an acceptable risk to take," he said. O’Reilly didn’t disagree, but he avoided specifics, saying, "I do fear that we have to plan for some adaptations."

It was a remarkable admission, one that most media coverage buried far beneath angles focusing on the common ground they found. But if the oil industry isn’t willing to diligently address the crisis — or worse, if it hinders political efforts to do so, as it has done for decades — does it really matter that it acknowledge the problem?

That core conflict created the sharpest exchange of the forum. "This is the 21st century. We can move much faster than we ever have before," Pope said.

"Well, if you can get the government to move faster, good luck," O’Reilly replied.

"It would help if you would get out of the way," Pope retorted.

Indeed, it is aggressive lobbying by Chevron and its industry trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, that created the energy situation that O’Reilly now finds so intractable. But Pope said he’s happy to work with O’Reilly on policies that support their areas of agreement, which even includes instituting a carbon tax.

Their clash didn’t just focus on global warming; it also focused on the oil industry’s wanton exploitation of people and ecosystems around the world, from propping up despotic regimes and sponsoring human rights abuses in oil-rich countries to leaving toxic messes in Ecuador and elsewhere.

Pope called for the oil industry to set aside 10 percent of its profits to create a global trust fund for dealing with its impacts and for international operating and cleanup standards that would prevent oil companies from exploiting weak or corrupt governments. "Chevron has to come to the table with the global community." Pope said.

O’Reilly never responded directly to the suggestion.

This one’s ugly

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news@sfbg.com

The most painful and divisive city budget season in many years was just getting under way as this issue went to press, with dueling City Hall rallies preceding the June 16 Board of Supervisors vote on an interim budget and the board’s Budget and Finance Committee slated to finally delve into the 2009-10 general fund budgets on June 17.

Both sides have adopted the rhetoric of a life-or-death struggle, with firefighters warning at a rally and in an advertising campaign that any cuts to their budget is akin to playing Russian Roulette, while city service providers say the deep public health cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom will also cost lives and carry dire long-term costs and consequences.

Despite Newsom’s pledges in January and again on June 1 to work closely with the Board of Supervisors on budget issues, that hasn’t happened. Instead, Newsom’s proposed budget would decimate the social services supported by board progressives, who responded by proposing an interim budget that would share that pain with police, fire, and sheriff’s budgets — which Newsom proposed to increase.

Rather than simply adopting the mayor’s proposed budget as the interim spending plan for the month of July, as the board traditionally has done, progressive supporters proposed an interim budget that would make up to $82 million in cuts to the three public safety agencies and use that money to prevent the more draconian cuts to social services.

“It’s the start of a discussion to figure out what that number should be. I don’t know where we’re going to end up,” Sup. David Campos, who sits on the budget committee, told us.

Board President David Chiu said Newsom did finally meet with him and Budget Committee chair John Avalos on June 15 to try to resolve the impasse. But he said, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.” They planned to meet again on June 19.

“What we proposed represents the magnitude of the challenge we face this year,” Chiu said of the interim budget proposal, seeming to indicate that supervisors are open to negotiation.

The real work begins the morning of June 17 when the Budget and Finance Committee dissects the budgets of 15 city departments, including the Mayor’s Office, of which Avalos told us, “I don’t think the mayor has made the same concessions as he’s had other departments make.”

The next day, another 13 city departments go under the committee’s microscope, including the public safety departments that were spared the mayor’s budget ax and even given small increases, and the budget of the Public Defenders Office, where Newsom proposes cutting 16 positions.

“This creates a severe imbalance in the criminal justice system,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi told us. “Why is he cutting public defender services while fully funding police, fully funding the sheriff’s department, and essentially creating a situation where poor people are going to get second-rate representation?”

That theme of rich vs. poor has pervaded the budget season debate, both overtly and in budget priorities that each side is supporting.

 

BUDGET JUSTICE

Hundreds of people whose lives would be affected by cuts marched on City Hall under the banner Budget Justice on June 10. Some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable citizens, including homeless people, immigrants, seniors, and public housing residents, turned out for the march, chanting and waving signs asking the mayor to “invest in us.”

Sups. John Avalos and Chris Daly delivered resounding speeches mirroring the anger in the crowd, and promised to fix the budget by reallocating money to protect the city’s safety net. Daly charged that even as services to the city’s vulnerable populations are being slashed, “the politically connected and the powerful get huge increases.”

Avalos took the podium just before heading into City Hall to lead the Budget and Finance Committee meeting and implored the hundreds of people gathered out front to make their voices heard. “Mayor Newsom, he told us, he said, ‘We have a near-perfect budget.’ Do we have a near-perfect budget?” Avalos asked, and then paused while the crowd cried out, “Nooo!!!!!”

During an interview discussing Newsom’s budget priorities, Avalos twice made references to The Shock Doctrine, using the Naomi Klein book about how crises are used as opportunities to unilaterally implement corporatist policies. “We have a budget deficit that is real, but it’s being used to do other things,” Avalos said. “I look at it as a way to remake San Francisco. It’s a Shock Doctrine effect.”

He referred to the privatization of government services (an aspect of every Newsom budget), promoting condo conversions and gentrification, defunding nonprofits that provides social services (groups that often side with progressives), and helping corporations raid the public treasury (Newsom proposed beefing up the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development by a whopping 32 percent).

“It’s things that the most conservative parts of San Francisco have wanted for years, and now they have the conditions to make it happen,” Avalos said.

Much of that agenda involves slashing services to the homeless and other low-income San Francisco and de-funding the nonprofit network that provides services and jobs. “There’s an effort to say nonprofit jobs aren’t real jobs, but they are an important economic engine of the city,” Avalos told us. Those cuts were decried during the June 10 budget rally.

“What people don’t realize,” Office & Professional Employees International Union Local 3 representative Natalie Naylor said, “is that everything that’s being proposed to be cut from the city is creating no place for homeless people to go during the daytime. I don’t think Newsom’s constituents realize that we’re going to see more homeless people on the street than ever before.”

Pablo Rodriguez of the Coalition on Homelessness told the crowd that he was furious that the mayor would make such deep cuts to social services. “Stop riding on the back of the homeless, and the seniors and the children and all the community-based organizations,” Rodriguez said. “Why make the poor people pay for the rich people’s mistakes? The poor people didn’t make the mistakes.”

 

WHOM TO CUT?

The public safety unions were equally caustic in their arguments. An announcement for the Save Our Firehouses rally — which was heavily promoted by members of the Mayor’s Office and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign team — claimed that “the Board of Supervisors voted to endanger the progress that we’ve made in public safety by laying off hundreds of police officers, closing up to 12 out of 42 fire stations and closing part of our jail.”

Actually, all sides have said the interim budget probably won’t lead to layoffs, station closures, or prisoner releases, but those could be a part of next year’s budget.

Tensions temporarily cooled a bit in the days that have followed, but the two sides still seemed far apart on their priorities, mayoral spin aside. Asked about the impasse, Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard told the Guardian, “The mayor has already included over 90 percent of the supervisors’ priorities in the budget. But he’s against the supervisors’ efforts to gut public safety. He’s willing to work with people who have reasonable ideas to balance the budget. Balancing the budget with draconian cuts to police and fire is unreasonable.”

Campos disputed Ballard’s figure and logic. “I don’t know where that number comes from,” Campos said. “A lot of the things we wanted to protect, the mayor cut anyway.”

Campos said Newsom’s slick budget presentation glossed over painful cuts to essential services, cuts that activists and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose have been discovering over the last two weeks. “I felt the mayor has done a real good job of presenting things to make it look like it’s not as bad as it really is,” Campos said.

 

COMMITTEE WORK

Avalos expressed confidence that his committee will produce a document to the full board in July that reflects progressive priorities.

“We’re going to pass to the full board a budget that we have control over,” Avalos said, noting that a committee majority that also includes Sups. Campos and Ross Mirkarimi strongly favors progressive budget priorities.

He also praised the committee’s more conservative members, Sups. Bevan Dufty and Carmen Chu, as engaged participants in improving the mayor’s budget. “I think the tension on the committee is healthy.”

Ultimately, Avalos says, he knows the board members can alter Newsom’s budget priorities. But his goal is to go even further and develop a consensus budget that creatively spreads the pain.

“Ideally, I want a unanimous vote on the Board of Supervisors,” Avalos said.

In the current polarized budget climate, that’s an ambitious goal that may be out of reach. But there are some real benefits to attaining a unanimous board vote, including the ability to place revenue measures on the November ballot that can be passed by a simply majority vote (state law generally requires a two-third vote to increase taxes, but it makes provisions for fiscal emergencies, when a unanimous Board of Supervisors vote can waive the two-thirds rule).

Avalos has proposed placing sales tax and parcel tax measures on the fall ballot. Other proposals that have been discussed by a stakeholder committee assembled by Chiu include a measure to replace the payroll tax with a new gross receipts tax and general obligation bond measures to pay for things like park and road maintenance, which would allow those budget expenses to be applied elsewhere.

But Avalos said Newsom will need to step up and show some leadership if the measures are going to have any hope of being approved. “To get the two-thirds vote we need to win a revenue measure in this bad economy is going to be really hard,” Avalos said.

“The mayor is open to new revenue measures as long as they include significant reforms and are conceived and supported by a wide swath of the community including labor and business,” Ballard said.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd — one of the most conservative supervisors — has repeatedly said he won’t support new revenue measures unless they are accompanied by substantial budget reforms that will rein in ballooning expenditures in areas like city employee pensions.

“Pension reform. Health care reform. Spending reform. One of the above. A combination of the above,” Elsbernd told the Guardian when asked what he wants to see in a budget revenue deal.

Avalos says he’s mindful that not every progressive priority can be fully funded as the city wrestles with a budget deficit of almost $500 million, fully half the city’s discretionary budget. “It’s a crappy situation, and we can make it just a crummy situation.”

Mayor’s Office targetted for cuts

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By Steven T. Jones
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The Budget and Finance Committee tomorrow begins work on the 2009-10 budgets of 15 city department that are funded by the General Fund, and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose today released his annual recommendations, suggesting additional cuts to most departments to try to offset deep cuts proposed by the mayor that supervisors want to restore.

And it’s no surprise that the Mayor’s Office has a big, fat target on its back, particularly after progressives on the Budget Committee asked Rose to single out public relations positions and other fluff that serves Gavin Newsom the candidate more than the people of San Francisco.

So, in addition to the $444,415 in cuts to the Mayor’s Office that Rose recommends (a level consistent with his assessments of other departments), he also helpfully lists $2.12 million in areas singled out by supervisors. They are the Mayor’s Offices of Communications ($653,571), Criminal Justice ($361,855), Neighborhood Services ($789,652), and his education and greening directors that are largely funded by other departments, including Muni ($315,160).

As the supervisors today deliberate the interim budget and where to come up with $82 million to restore deep cuts to core city services, these Mayor’s Office plums are likely to be attractive targets for the progressive-dominated committee that convenes tomorrow.

Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmble!!!

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By Steven T. Jones

The budget battle of the decade will erupt at City Hall over the next few hours, with firefighters, cops, and representatives of Mayor Gavin Newsom rallying out front at 1 p.m. and the providers and users of other city services – those slashed by Newsom, from public health to parks to social services – rallying with progressive supervisors in the same spot at 12:30 p.m.
Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard denied accusations of improper coordination between Newsom and firefighters, who are represented by Eric Jaye, who is also running Newsom gubernatorial campaign. “There is an ethical wall between the Mayor and Eric Jaye on these issues, ” Ballard said. “[Newsom] agrees with the firefighters, but he is not involved with planning the rally. Maybe he’ll stop by.”
Expect fireworks and angry accusations being traded before both sides file into Board Chambers at 2 p.m. as supervisors consider an interim budget that shifts $82 million in Newsom cuts over to the public safety departments that actually got small budget increases despite the $438 million deficit.
Newsom did finally follow through on his seven-month-old pledge to work with supervisors yesterday, meeting with Board President David Chiu and Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, but they failed to resolve the impasse. As Chiu told us, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.”
In other words: Game on!

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