Steven T. Jones

Solar project approved despite doubts

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By Steven T. Jones
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SF’s Sunset Reservoir will soon be covered in solar panels

A last ditch effort by progressive supervisors to reconsider an expensive solar power project fell one vote short yesterday when progressive Sup. Eric Mar maintained his unqualified support for the deal and refused to send it back to committee for more research and discussion.

At issue is a five-megawatt solar array atop Sunset Reservoir, which the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission recommended awarding to Recurrent Energy, despite the fact that the 25-year deal obligates the city to pay $235 per megawatt-hour throughout the life of the project (even though prices are expected to drop as new technologies come online) and setting the city’s buyout price at $33 million or more.

Uphill climb

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steve@sfbg.com

Bicyclists generally try to avoid hills, so one of the most popular bike routes in town is a series of turns called the Wiggle, which snakes along a valley through the Lower Haight. The route — a sort of bridge between east and west — is traveled by a growing number of bicyclists, from hipster kids on colorful fixies to grizzled seniors on comfortable touring bikes.

I ride the Wiggle every day. Coming from the Panhandle, the most harrowing approach is the three blocks I have to travel on busy Oak Street, competing for space with impatient motorists who often seem to forget that they’re wielding deadly weapons. Many times I’ve had cars zip by me within inches, honk (a very startling sound when you’re not wrapped in metal and glass), zoom up right behind me, or flip me off.

But then I turn right onto Scott Street — and the world suddenly changes. My heart rate drops and I breathe deeply. Rain or shine, there are almost as many bikes there as cars. The cyclists smile and nod at one another and even the motorists seem more respectful, sometimes waving us through the stop signs even when it’s their turn. It feels like an informally functional community. It’s how traveling around this city ought to be.

Even though the citywide percentage of vehicle trips taken by bicycle in San Francisco is still in single digits (compared to more than 20 percent in many European cities), and even though a court injunction that’s expected to be lifted this summer has banned any new bike projects in the city for the past three years, bicycling is booming in San Francisco, increasing by almost 50 percent since 2006. I’m never alone these days on my solo commute.

My decision to ride a bike and sell my car wasn’t about joining a movement. I just like to ride my bike, a simple joy that I really began to rediscover about 10 years ago. It’s fun, cheap, and an easy way to get exercise. And it connects me with my surroundings — the people, buildings, and streetscapes of this beautiful city — in a way I didn’t even realize I was missing when I drove.

But as pressing political and planetary realities have welled up around my personal transportation choice, I’ve come to see that I am part of a movement, one that encapsulates just about every major issue progressive San Franciscans care about: public health, environmentalism, energy policy, economics, urban planning, social justice, public safety, sustainability, personal responsibility, and the belief that we can make our communities better places, that we’re not captive to past societal choices.

As a bicyclist and a journalist, I’ve been actively engaged in these struggles for many years. I understand that bicyclists are criticized in many quarters as a vocal minority with a self-righteous sense of superiority and entitlement, and that I’m personally accused of bias for writing empathetically about bicyclists in dozens of bike-related stories.

Well, guess what? I don’t apologize. We are better than motorists, by every important measure. We use less space and fewer resources and create less waste and pollution. Bikes are available to almost every segment of society, and we don’t need to fight wars to power them. They improve the community’s health and happiness. And when we get into accidents, we don’t kill or maim the people we hit.

And you know what else? This really is going to be the Year of the Bicycle, as it’s been dubbed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the city’s largest grassroots civic organization, with more than 10,000 dues-paying members. There are more of us than ever, politicians now listen to us, and San Francisco is on the verge of the most rapid expansion of its bike network that any American city has ever seen.

This is the moment we’ve been moving toward for many years, a turning point that the Guardian has meticulously chronicled and proudly promoted. The bicycle has become a metaphor for progress that is long overdue. So mount up on May 14, Bike to Work Day, if you’d like to be a part of the solution to what’s ailing our city and planet.

I love my bike, and so do most people who see it. San Franciscans appreciate the little things, like someone who rides a silly-looking bike.

It started as a basic used mountain bike, but I styled it out for Burning Man a few years ago, covering it with heavy red acrylic paint that looks like stucco, a big basket covered in fake fur and ringed with electro-luminescent wire, and custom-welded high handlebars topped by a lizard horn.

Maybe you’ve seen me around town — and if so, maybe you’ve seen me blow through stop signs or red lights. Yes, I’m that guy, and I only apologize if I’m stealing a motorist’s right-of-way, which I try to avoid. Rob Anderson, who successfully sued San Francisco to force detailed studies of its Bike Plan (and blogs at district5diary.blogspot.com), regularly calls me and my ilk the "bike fanatics."

I’ve interviewed Anderson by phone a few times and tangled with him online many times. He’s actually a pretty well-informed and well-reasoned guy, except for his near pathological disdain for bicycling, which he considers an inherently dangerous activity that government has no business promoting and is not a serious transportation option.

But San Francisco would be a gridlocked nightmare without bikes. Transportation officials say this is already one of the most traffic-choked cities in the country (second after Houston), a big factor in Muni never reaching its voter-mandated 85 percent on-time performance. During peak hours, most Muni lines reach their holding capacity. Imagine 37,500 additional people (the estimated number of San Franciscans who primarily travel by bike) driving or taking Muni every day.

Conversely, imagine the transportation system if bicycling rates doubled and some of those bulky cars and buses became zippy bikes. Quality of life would improve; the air would be cleaner; we would emit far less greenhouse gases (transportation accounts for about half of the Bay Area’s carbon emissions); housing would get cheaper (building parking increases costs and decreases the number of housing units); pressure would decrease to drill for oil offshore and prop up despotic regimes in oil-rich countries; pedestrians would be safer (about a dozen are killed by cars here every year); and public health would improve (by reducing obesity and respiratory ailments associated with air pollution).

Increase bicycling rates even more, to the levels of Berlin, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, and San Francisco would be utterly transformed, with many streets converted to car-free boulevards as the demand shifts from facilitating speeding cars to creating space for more bicyclists and pedestrians.

Sure, as Anderson points out, many people will never ride a bike. The elderly, those with disabilities, some families with kids, and a few other groups can credibly argue that the bicycle isn’t a realistic daily transportation option. But that’s a small percentage of the population.

For the rest of you: what’s your excuse? Why would you continue to rely on such wasteful and expensive transportation options — a label that applies to both cars and buses — when you could use the most efficient vehicle ever invented?

At the SFBC’s annual Golden Wheels Awards banquet on May 5, SFBC director Leah Shahum described a bike movement at the peak of its power, reach, and influence. "In the last two years, we’ve seen an unprecedented political embrace of bicycling," she said, praising Mayor Gavin Newsom for his championing of the Sunday Streets car-free space and calling the progressive-dominated Board of Supervisors "the most bike-friendly board we’ve ever seen."

In just a few years, the SFBC went from fighting pitched battles with Newsom over closing some Golden Gate Park roads to cars on Saturdays — a two-year fight that ended in a compromise after some serious ill-will on both sides — to Newsom’s championing an even larger Sunday Streets road closure on six days this spring and summer, even fighting through business community opposition to do so.

As with many Newsom initiatives, it’s difficult to discern his motivation, which seems to be a mixture of political posturing and a desire to keep San Francisco on the cutting edge of the green movement. Whatever the case, the will to take street space from automobiles — which will be the crux of the struggles to come — is probably greater now than it has ever been.

Because at the end of the day, Anderson is right: bicyclists do have a radical agenda. We want to take space from cars, both lanes and parking spaces, all over this city. That’s what has to happen to create a safe, complete bicycle system, which is a prerequisite to encouraging more people to cycle. We need to realize that designing the city around automobiles is an increasingly costly and unsustainable model.

"The streets do not have to be solely — or even primarily — for cars anymore," Shahum told an audience that included City Attorney Dennis Herrera, top mayoral aide Mike Farrah, and several members of the Board of Supervisors (including President David Chiu, a regular cyclist and occasional bike commuter), drawing warm applause.

Shahum was certainly correct when she called the politically engaged community of bicyclists "one of the strongest and most successful movements in this city," one she believes is capable of moving an ambitious agenda. "During the next six weeks, we have the opportunity to win a literal doubling of the city’s bike network."

She’s referring to the imminent completion of environmental studies that support the city’s Bike Plan, which will allow the courts to lift the nearly three-year-old injunction against new bike projects in the city. The SFBC has been aggressively organizing and advocating for the immediate approval of all 56 near-term bikeway improvements outlined in the plan, which have been studied and are ready to go, most with grant funding already in the bank.

"I think San Francisco is hungry for a higher use of public space," she said. "Imagine streets moving so calmly and slowly that you’d let your six-year-old ride on them."

That’s the standard advocated by the international car-free movement, which I interacted with last year when I covered the International Carfree Conference in Portland, Ore. These influential advocates believe bikeways should be so safe and insulated from fast-moving traffic that both the young and old feel comfortable riding them.

"Streets belong to us — they are the public spaces of the city — but they don’t feel like they belong to us," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, a sponsor of Sunday Streets, which was honored at the Golden Wheel Awards. The streets, he told the crowd, "don’t need to be the objects of fear."

Later, as we spoke, Radulovich said it’s not enough to create narrow bikes lanes on busy streets. One of the great joys of riding a bike with a friend is to be able to talk as you ride, something he said transportation advocates around the world refer to as the "conversational standard."

Politically, there’s a long way to go before San Francisco embraces the conversational standard, the creation of permanent car-free bike boulevards, or traffic law changes that promote bicycling. Anderson and his ilk reacted with outrage last year when the Guardian and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission began discussing adopting Idaho’s bike laws here, in which bicyclists treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs (see "Don’t stop: Bike lessons from Idaho," 5/14/08).

Yet until bicycling is taken more seriously as a real transportation option, all this talk about sustainability and green-everything is going to continue falling woefully short of its objectives.

The powerhouse environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council held a gala awards dinner May 9 at the California Academy of Sciences for its first Growing Green Awards, an effort to honor innovators in the growing sustainable food movement.

The award selection panel was chaired by journalist Michael Pollan, whose The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2006) and other works have made him a leading voice calling for recognition and reform of a corporate food system that is unsustainable, unhealthy, and harmful to the environment.

That movement has garnered some high-profile support and attention, but has so far failed to effectively counter the influence of agribusiness interests, he told me. "We need an organization like the NRDC in the food area, or we need to get NRDC to embrace our issues."

The awards banquet showed that Pollan and his allies have made progress with the NRDC, which should be a natural ally of advocates for better food and transportation systems, two realms that have the biggest impact on this country’s natural resources.

But when I left the ceremony as hundreds of guests were being seated for dinner, I rode away — on the only bicycle there.

Board restores some Muni service, but Newsom gets his fare hike

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By Steven T. Jones

After hours of negotiations between the Mayor’s Office (mostly via its representative, Sup. Carmen Chu) and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, President David Chiu reconvened his colleagues this evening to announce that he had cut a deal on his challenge to Muni’s budget: “I’m happy to say we’ve made good headway.”

Chiu asked MTA chief Nat Ford to announce the terms: the agency would trim $10.3 million from the budget (a $2.8 million reduction in the $66 million it is giving to other city departments, $6.5 million in salary and operations savings and other nips and tucks, and $1 million in increased parking revenue after a 90-day study of extending meter hours) and restore $8.6 million in proposed Muni service cuts, immediately complete MOU negotiations with the SFPD to finally explain why the MTA is giving them millions of dollars every year, and delay by six months increases in what seniors, youth and the disabled will pay for Fast Passes.

Everyone thanked Chiu for taking the lead on challenging the MTA budget and negotiating a settlement to this conflict with Mayor Gavin Newsom, then all the progressive supervisors criticized the package as a bad deal that unduly punishes Muni riders and lets Newsom get away with raiding what is supposed to be an independent agency. “I have to say I’m utterly disappointed with where we are right now,” said Sup. David Campos, the first to react to the freshly inked deal.

The board voted 6-5 to drop its challenge of MTA’s budget, allowing fares to increase to $2 and services to be reduced, with Sups. Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, John Avalos, and Eric Mar in dissent.

Seeming stung by the criticism of his colleagues, Chiu seemed to lay blame where it belonged when he said, “On Friday, the mayor and I had a conversation about this budget and it was made clear to me that there wouldn’t be any movement….We needed to work this out so we could move forward on the myriad issues before us.”

Muni budget deal keeps fare hikes

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The Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 in favor of a Muni budget deal that restores almost $10 million in cuts but leaves the fare hike to $2 and most of the MTA transfers to other departments intact. More details in a couple hours.

Newsom pushes hard for Muni budget cuts

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By Steven T. Jones
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Newsom only rides Muni for photos ops, so he won’t feel the pinch of paying $2 fares for decreased service.

As the Board of Supervisors prepares to vote this afternoon on a Muni budget that would raise fares and cut service in order to subsidize other city departments and protect drivers from increased parking fees, pressure from Mayor Gavin Newsom has reportedly flipped Sup. Bevan Dufty and weakened the resolve of the final swing vote, Sup. Sophie Maxwell.

Streetsblog has an excellent report (including audio from Newsom yesterday) about how Dufty – after voting against the Muni budget in committee just last week — has relented to accusations by the Mayor’s Office that a vote against the MTA budget is a vote to widen the city’s budget deficit.

Yet the reality is that the city charter makes the MTA an independent agency, not a piggybank for the Police Department, Newsom’s cherished 311 call center, or the other city agencies that will siphon off $66 million in Muni funds through work orders for functions that they perform anyway. Work orders have increased by way more than the $26 million per year that Newsom encouraged voters to give Muni by approving Prop. A in 2007.

Newsom tried dismissed arguments that the budget would create a downward spiral for Muni, which is already reeling from state budget cuts, saying of the issue “this is nothing.” He also said, “You have to be responsible for the things you advocate because there’s tradeoffs.” That’s true, and apparently Newsom is willing to trade the MTA’s independence and the quality of public transit in San Francisco for appeasing the cops, subsidizing 311, and justifying his budgetary unilateralism and opposition to new revenue measures.

Hogarth out in D6 supes race

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By Steven T. Jones

Paul Hogarth has announced his withdrawal from the District 6 race for the Board of Supervisors, clearing the way for Debra Walker to be the sole significant progressive candidate in that race (although Jim Meko will also vie for those votes in a district that is one of the city’s most liberal, while downtown is expected to offer up its own candidate).

In making his announcement, Hogarth — who works for Tenderloin Housing Clinic and writes for its Beyond Chron blog — cited financial reasons and the fact that his heart just wasn’t in it right now. He had come under some criticism in the Guardian and elsewhere for planning to continue writing for the blog as he ran.

Hellman to the rescue

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By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco financier Warren Hellman is one of downtown’s most complex and interesting figures, as I learned years ago when I worked on an award-winning profile of him. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch and spoken every few months, often about the state of the print media in San Francisco and around the country.

Earlier this year, as the Chronicle was having its problems, we again talked about the need for a more sustainable media model and he said that he planned to contact Hearst executives and explore the possibility of creating a nonprofit paper, a goal that other less connected and endowed entities have also been pursuing (including The Public Press, on whose steering committee I’ve served). But Hellman has the pull to get top executives on the phone and to generate significant capital.

Now, as the San Francisco Business Times reports, Hellman has made significant progress and says he intends to make an announcement in two months about how he plans to create a new print media presence in San Francisco.

We wish him luck and are anxious to see what his team comes up with.

Hall of Shame on torture includes Bay Area notables

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By Steven T. Jones
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It’s shameful that the Bay Area is home to so many of the top people implicated in creating this country’s torture program. They include the former White House lawyers who created the legal justification for the program, Jay Bybee (who is now a justice at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, located on 7th Street) and John Yoo (who teaches law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall); top Bush Administration enablers Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, who are down at Stanford’s Hoover Institute; and our own Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who was reportedly briefed on the program when it began back in 2002 as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

While Pelosi has so far (inexplicably) escaped serious scrutiny of the issue (just as she did about her foreknowledge of Bush’s illegal wiretapping program), there’s a budding impeachment movement against Bybee, Rice and Rumsfeld reportedly need to consult lawyers before traveling (they should really visit Spain, which I hear is lovely this time of year), and regular protests calling for Yoo’s removal continue next week when World Can’t Wait plans to have a large protest outside Boalt’s commencement ceremonies on May 16 at the Greek Theater.

Justice is coming slowly, but it is coming.

Will Newsom play chicken with the MTA budget?

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By Steven T. Jones
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As the Board of Supervisors prepares to reject the Municipal Transportation Agency’s budget this Tuesday, word is the Mayor’s Office and MTA are threatening to play chicken and not try in good faith to develop a new budget before the current one expires at the end of the month (in which case, the city General Fund would pay for current Muni service levels, thus expanding the city’s budget deficit).

“We don’t have a course of action charted for if the Board of Supervisors rejects this budget,” MTA spokesperson Judson True said. When I asked whether the board would get together next week to try to develop a budget (its next meeting is May 19), he said, “Whether the MTA board convenes or not is up to the MTA board.”

And that board is made up entirely of mayoral appointees, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. The Mayor’s Office has not answered our inquiries, and MTA director Nat Ford hasn’t been available to supervisors or anyone else. He even cancelled a long-planned interview tonight on the City Desk News Hour, on which I’ll be discussing this issue tonight (7 p.m. on Comcast Channel 11).

It’s not as if the MTA and Newsom didn’t see this coming. More than a month ago, Board President David Chiu visited the MTA and said the Board of Supervisors would reject the budget if it relied too heavily on Muni service cuts and fare hikes and if it continued to subsidize other city agencies through ballooning work orders.

City College raid moves us closer to accountability

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By Steven T. Jones

News that prosecutors have raided the administrative offices at City College of San Francisco seeking documents associated with a scheme to launder public funds into campaign contributions (a story that Chron investigative reporter Lance Williams broke in 2007, and which the Guardian has furthered a couple times) is a big deal and a long time in coming.

As the Guardian has written repeatedly over the years, City College administrators from former Chancellor Phil Day on down have always played fast and loose with the people’s money and need to be held accountable.

The DA’s investigation should cast a wide net in learning who knew about this money laundering scheme, including looking at longtime board members who enabled Day and held back the reformers. Luckily, that board now has some public spirited members, including Milton Marks, John Rizzo, and Chris Jackson (who just joined the board last year), but they’re still in the minority. Nonetheless, they need to push this board to work hard to restore the public’s confidence in this important institution.

Layoffs at the San Francisco Chronicle

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By Steven T. Jones

Hearst dropped the hammer on the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, laying off 20 people in the newsroom, including award-winning veteran writers Susan Sward and Jane Kay. SFist was the first up with a fairly complete list, which our sources at the Chron has confirmed is accurate.

The layoffs follow voluntary buyouts that dozens of Chron employees took, including political writer John Wildermuth. Most of the terminations, both the layoffs and buyouts, go into effect at the end of the month. Although Chron employees knew this was coming, it was still tough blow to morale at the paper.

An employee meeting to discuss the news has been set for 4:30 pm. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.

“Failing to grasp the big picture”

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By Steven T. Jones

The supervisors that voted 4-1 yesterday to reject the MTA’s budget were smart, deliberate, curious, and forward-looking, so it’s no surprise that the Mayor Gavin Newsom’s flack Nathan Ballard told the Chronicle that they were “failing to grasp the big picture” and causing cuts in public health and other city services.

If those cuts happen, that’s Newsom’s fault for blocking the new revenue measures that President David Chiu, who also led this charge in questioning a budget that will hurt Muni and the city, tried to create. Instead, Newsom supports this utterly dishonest MTA budget, which takes even more than the $26 million per year that voters in 2007 said they wanted Muni to have by approving Prop. A and using it to fund pet projects that he wants to claim in his run for governor.

Newsom was also the one who decided to pay MTA director Nat Ford $316,000, the highest salary in the city, and to negotiate overly generous contracts with city police, fire, and management unions that he’s now having to try to go back and undo. He lets taxpayers pay Ballard and other highly paid political operatives and lets his precious 311 call center charge the MTA almost $2 per call, which is more than it costs to ride the bus. And he wants MTA is increase the number of fare inspectors, even though that program costs $8 million and only netted $350,000 in fines. On and on it goes, as the hearing yesterday clearly highlighted.

But don’t take my word for it, go to SFGTV and watch the Budget and Finance Committee hearing, starting around the third hour when this item began. Watch Chiu respectfully and intelligently ask insightful questions of Ford that clearly showed just how bad this budget is. Then you’ll grasp the big picture and appreciate who’s really running the city and who’s willing to sacrifice this city on the altar of his personal ambitions.

Supervisors seem primed to reject MTA budget

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By Steven T. Jones

While the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing on President David Chiu’s proposal to reject the Municipal Transportation Agency’s disastrous budget is just getting underway, the fact that Chiu has six co-sponsors (giving him the seven votes required to reject it) seems to indicate that this budget is going down.

“If people have to pay more for less, they will stop taking Muni,” Chiu said at the hearing, referring to an MTA budget that closes a $126 million budget deficit mostly with Muni fare increases and deep service cuts.

Chiu and Sup. David Campos also took issue with the $66 million that the MTA is planning to pay out to other city agencies, most notably the police and health departments and the 311 call center, a pet project of Mayor Gavin Newsom. “Whatever money riders of Muni pay into the system should be used for public transportation,” Campos said, adding that his Mission District constituents are angry that the MTA is being used as a piggy bank by other city departments. “I’m very troubled by that and I believe the voters of my district are troubled by that.”

While this saga will take at least another week or two to play out at the board level, if Chiu’s co-sponsors remain supportive, the board is going to make the MTA come up with a fair, smart budget that doesn’t subsidize unrelated services or discourage public transit use when we need it most.

Bike Coalition honors Sunday Streets

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By Steven T. Jones
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Proponents of Sunday Streets accepting their award. Photo by Orange Photography courtesy of the SFBC.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition honored the proponents of Sunday Streets – the temporary closure of San Francisco roads to cars that was created by a partnership of groups ranging from Livable City to the Mayor’s Office – at its annual Golden Wheels awards event, held last night in the War Memorial Building across from City Hall.

Sunday Streets, part of an international trend toward adopting the ciclovias popularized in Columbia as a means of expanding public space and promoting fitness and recreation, started last year in San Francisco with two events and there are six planned for this year, with the second coming this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. from AT&T Park to the Bayview Opera House.

“The streets belong to us, they are the public spaces of the city, but they don’t feel like they belong to us,” said Livable City director Tom Radulovich, who praised the unlikely coalition that brought these events together. “I don’t get a chance to thank the mayor for very many things…But the mayor was committed to this.”

Beyond May Day

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Text and photos by Joe Sciarrillo
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Thousands marched in Bay Area cities on May 1 to honor International Workers’ Day, or May Day, offering a preview of the big struggles to come on the national political front.

Mission District activists chanted on Dolores Street, “¡Qué viva las familias! ¡Qué viva el barrio! Viva!” energizing participants to join together to support their families and neighborhoods. Yet the daily struggles of immigrants and laborers, families living hand-to-mouth, and loved ones separated by borders has eluded most media outlets and commentators.

The nationwide marches focused on calls for comprehensive immigration reform and improving workers’ conditions, including passing the Employee Free Choice Act. This was just days after the first question at President Barack Obama’s April 29 news conference asked if he would close the U.S./Mexico border due to the swine flu outbreak. He, of course, responded by declaring that he would not do so.

The real defenders of San Francisco values

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By Steven T. Jones
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While Mayor Gavin Newsom gallivants around the country – he’s been back east accepting accolades for same-sex marriage and Healthy San Francisco and trying to shore up White House support for his Treasure Island and Hunters Point redevelopment schemes – other city leaders are doing the hard work of restoring San Francisco values.

On Wednesday, there are two shining examples of this uphill battle that take place on opposite ends of Civic Center Plaza. First, SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi hosts “Justice Summit 2009: Defending the Public and the Constitution,” which highlights the importance of constitutional guarantees of quality legal representation for all defendants, regardless of income level, a right that has been eroded by budgetary pressures in San Francisco and around the country.

Among the long list of respected legal thinkers will be a keynote speech by US District Judge Thelton Henderson, who has ordered California to finally do something about severe overcrowding and substandard medical care in its prisons – a laudable and courageous stand that has been met with utter cowardice, contempt, and pandering by state officials. That event begins at 10 a.m. in the main library’s Koret Auditorium.

Then, at 1:30 in City Hall, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee will consider a proposal by Board President David Chiu to reject the terrible and short-sighted budget that was just approved by the Municipal Transportation Agency, which reduces Muni service and increases the fare to $2 while asking little from motorists (who will increase in numbers as more people eschew taking transit) or from Muni chief Nat Ford, whose $316,459 salary is the highest in city government (again, Newsom’s doing).

These are difficult issues that require hard work (and more revenue from the well-heeled city residents that Newsom is siding with in blocking a special election on tax measures), but it’s good to see we still have some public-spirited elected officials who are willing to take risks and work for San Francisco values instead of simply campaigning on them.

How Weird to pay SFPD’s protection money

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By Steven T. Jones

Faced with San Francisco Police Department threats to block their permits to sell beer and to have amplified music, organizers of the How Weird Street Faire have decided to pay the nearly $10,000 that the cops were demanding up front rather than go to court to fight fees that appear to violate caps written into city codes.

How Weird organizer Brad Olsen said vendor fees and other financial support should allow them to come up with the money. That’s good news for those planning to attend the May 10 event, although other outdoor event advocates — such as John Wood, with the Entertainment Commission and Love Fest — had urged How Weird to make a stand against rapidly escalating SFPD fees. As the Guardian reported, city codes cap fees for events this size at $5,494.

Police have said they’re required to recover all costs associated with the event, although it is the SFPD that decides have many cops on overtime are required to staff the event, which has had no major police incidents in its 10-year history. Love Fest is a far larger event covering more territory, and therefore gets a bigger SFPD bill, so this fight is likely to pick up again once its organizers begin the permit process this summer.

Meanwhile, the SFPD has begun an aggressive campaign to crackdown on underground parties, one that has caused the dozens of local Burning Man camps now staging fundraisers to get creative in throwing parties. Many have moved the parties to the East Bay, while others are renting out existing clubs in San Francisco to get around the crackdown (which many suspect is tied to an SFPD power vacuum and struggle as Chief Heather Fong prepares to retire).

Stay tuned to the Guardian for more coverage of the Death of Fun.

Celebration, cigars, and a bloody nose at Mirkarimi baby bar crawl

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Text by Steven T. Jones, photos by Tim Daw
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Friends, colleagues and supporters of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi gathered last night to celebrate the recent birth of his son, Theo Aureliano Mirkarimi, with an event dubbed the Mirkarimi Man-Baby Shower and Bar Crawl that started at Molotov’s in Lower Haight.

Among those taking part in an event centered around drinking, cigar smoking, carousing, congratulatory support, wearing custom trucker’s caps, and general male bonding were Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, his predecessor Aaron Peskin, City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey, Chiu board aide David Noyola, former mayoral candidate Quintin Mecke, Mirkarimi aide Rick Galbreath, Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann, former Santa Monica mayor Mike Feinstein, Entertainment Commissioner John Wood and local political activists Julian Davis, Andy Blue, Dan Nguyen-Tan, Amandeep Jawa, and Boris Delepine.
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Macanudos and Mecke

Herrera lobbies for Healthy San Francisco

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By Steven T. Jones
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When I arrived back at San Francisco International Airport last night, weary after a long trip from Prague, I was surprised to bump into City Attorney Dennis Herrera. We chatted a moment and he told me that he was taking a red eye flight to DC to lobby the US Labor Department into supporting our Healthy San Francisco program.

As you may remember, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has been mounting an aggressive (but so far unsuccessful) legal challenge of the city’s universal healthcare program, which is partially funded by employer contributions. GGRA is now trying to get the US Supreme Court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling in the city’s favor.

Bush’s Labor Department filed an amicus brief supporting GGRA’s contention that the program violates the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a stance Herrera hopes the new administration will reverse. “We have higher hopes for the Obama Labor Department, so this is a preliminary discussion that Dennis is having with them,” Herrera spokesperson Matt Dorsey told me today.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a former restaurateur who belonged to GGRA, claims credit on the gubernatorial campaign trail for Healthy San Francisco (which was actually created by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano), but did little to either get it passed or to defend it against attack from his allies. As with same-sex marriage, the other big feather Newsom tries to wear in his candidate’s cap, it is Herrera who’s doing the heavy lifting while Newsom pretends to Californians that he’s leading San Francisco.

Tax pot and the rich, or bury our heads

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By Steven T. Jones

Newspapers and politicians can empower citizens, or they can promote cynicism and gridlock. The package of bad choices being presented to voters in the coming election are an example of the latter, and so is an article in today’s Chronicle reporting poll results showing voters want neither tax increases nor spending cuts.

It’s certainly true that most people want maximum services and minimal taxes, but Chron’s writer Carla Marinucci does a real disservice by her selective presentation of the Field Poll results. Rather than writing “state voters strongly oppose both new taxes and cuts in their favorite programs and services,” she could have written this: A new poll shows state voters want to close the budget gap by legalizing marijuana and increasing taxes on millionaires.

Instead, readers must make the jump to learn that 56 percent of voters want to legalize and tax marijuana, something legislation by Assembly member Tom Ammiano would do. And they have to make it almost to the end of the story to read that, “Three-quarters also supported more taxes on millionaires.”

It’s sad that veteran Chronicle political writer John Wildermuth has decided to take the Hearst buyout and leave the ailing paper, and we’re left with Marinucci and her consistently disempowering and conservative point-of-view. If the Chronicle wants to become relevant to this city, they should find a political writer who can recognize and present opportunities for progress.

Rev. Billy runs for mayor of NYC

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By Steven T. Jones

Billy Talen was an activist and performance artist living in San Francisco in the early ‘90s when he became Reverend Billy, the charismatic founder and pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping. “We were always looking for ways to highlight the politics of our time,” Talen said. “One of the ideas we had was to appropriate the right-wing icon.”

Talen, his alter ego, and his flock have evolved over the years: moving to New York City in 1996 to preach the evils of rampant consumerism from the streets of Times Square, transformed by 9/11 into something like a real church, attending Burning Man in 2003 and developing an important relationship with that community, performing around the world, making the excellent film “What Would Jesus Buy?”, and this year renaming themselves the Church of Life After Shopping to better capture the redemptive nature of their calling.

But last month, Rev. Billy took an even larger leap of faith, announcing his Green Party candidacy for mayor of New York City. He will run against Mayor Michael Bloomberg the man, but also Michael Bloomberg the Wall Street made billionaire, as potent a symbol of the capitalism ethos and excesses as any in the country.

The Guardian caught up with Talen yesterday at his campaign office in SoHo (a neighborhood where he also lived until being driven to Brooklyn by rapidly rising rents) for a long conversation about a campaign that seems to highlight the most pressing issues of these turbulent times. We’ll post excerpts from that interview, and regularly check in with the unfolding campaign, periodically between now and November.

In other words…to be continued.

Fun under seige

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news@sfbg.com

As San Francisco’s party season gets underway — a time when just about every weekend includes street fairs and festivals, venerable celebrations like Bay to Breakers, quirky cultural events such a flash mobs, promoter-created club nights, and underground parties designed to raise funds for Burning Man camps and other endeavors — police and other party-poopers keep finding new ways to crack down on the fun.

The latest: potentially fatal price gouging of the How Weird Street Faire, a series of bizarre police raids on underground clubs, and state alcohol officials threatening to yank local club licenses.

For years, the Guardian has been warning that NIMBY neighbors, intolerant enforcers, and indifferent city officials were threatening the vibrant social events that make San Francisco such a fun and unique city (see “Death of fun,” 5/23/06, “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/25/07, and regular recent posts on the SFBG Politics blog).

Lately the situation has gotten so bad that even the conservative San Francisco Examiner has written about the problem (“Squeezing the fun out of festivals,” 4/13/09) and followed it up with an editorial calling for city officials to address the issue and ensure that the cultural events can keep happening.

Overwhelming public opposition to recently proposed restrictions on the May 17 Bay to Breakers and April 12 Bring Your Own Big Wheel events led City Hall to pressure the San Francisco Police Department into reversing promises of a crackdown, although many events are being threatened.

The How Weird Street Faire is scheduled for May 10, although organizers say they can’t come up with the nearly $10,000 the San Francisco Police Department is demanding by May 1. Organizer Brad Olsen sought help from City Hall (Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and senior mayoral aide Mike Farrah — who helped save BYOBW — have both tried to intervene, so far to no avail) and unearthed city codes that seem to cap police fees for events like How Weird at $5,494, but the cops haven’t budged.

“Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope,” SFPD Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird promoters on April 13, suggesting that organizers take out a loan to pay the escautf8g protection money demanded by SFPD.

But Olsen said his grassroots group, which barely breaks even on the event, has never in its 10-year history been required to pay in advance and told us that entrance donations at the event are the only real source of revenue for the popular dance party.

Meanwhile the Guardian has heard multiple reports of undercover cops infiltrating underground parties in SoMa in the early morning hours of April 11 and 12, followed up by groups of more than a dozen uniformed officers storming in and roughly making arrests for resisting arrest, illegal alcohol sales, and drug possession.

“All of a sudden an undercover cop just tackled someone on the dance floor,” 27-year-old San Francisco resident Ryan Parkhurst told us, describing the scene at one party. “Then at that point, more than 10 officers came upstairs … I asked an officer, ‘What’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Arrest this guy.'”

Parkhurst said four cops then jumped on him, roughed him up, and arrested him. “Another guy was beat up worse than I was, with severe bruises and scratches all over his face.”

Parkhurst said he was charged with being drunk in public, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, but when he went to court on April 13, he was told all charges had been dropped.

SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Lyn Tomioka spent several days trying to gather information on the raids, but had little to offer by Guardian press time. “I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for based on what the computer is telling me,” she said. The District Attorney’s Office also did not respond by press time.

The attention that the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is paying to licensed venues seems to have ratcheted up lately as well. DNA Lounge, a nightlife haunt for freaks of all stripes, was cited by ABC in February for operating “a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals” after undercover agents for the department witnessed brief instances of nudity and simulated intercourse during the DNA’s popular regular queer parties Cream and Escandalo.

These instances occurred during go-go and stage routines, mostly involving flashing buttocks and a wet T-shirt contest. In a statement on the DNA Lounge Web site , www.dnalounge.com, DNA owner Jamie Zawinski contends that ABC is retaliating against his club for appealing the department’s decision not to grant DNA a conversion of its license from a Type 48 (21-and-over bar) to a Type 47 (all-ages venue that serves food). During the appeal process, a settlement was reached, and the DNA successfully converted its license.

“As a direct result of our having filed an appeal, ABC began sending undercover agents into the club during our gay and lesbian promotions looking for dirt,” Zawinski writes, drawing attention to the specific targeting of DNA’s queer nights, a particular that inflamed the gay community when a story about it was published in the Bay Area Reporter.

It is the specific requirement that all-ages venues collect 50 percent or more of their revenue from food sales that has gotten several other San Francisco clubs in trouble with ABC. The state requires that venues possessing a Type 47 (“bona fide eating place”) license, a requirement for most all-ages clubs, earn just as much revenue from food sales as liquor sales. That’s particularly daunting for businesses that have traditionally made most of their money at the bar.

“There is grave concern and fear,” San Francisco Entertainment Commissioner Terrence Alan told the Guardian, “that the recent conflicting and oftentimes underground regulations [of ABC] could undermine the great and ongoing work of the Entertainment Commission and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s proposed cultural legislation.”

Alan was referring to the “Promoting and Sustaining Music and Culture in San Francisco” charter amendment sponsored by Mirkarimi that would “produce a master plan and vision that promotes a sustainable environment for music, culture, and entertainment throughout the city.”

It appears the law enforcement types are doing everything possible to make sure Mirkarimi’s vision never becomes reality.

Uncivil unions

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steve@sfbg.com

Who really cares about an appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors? There isn’t a delicate balance of power on the board or any major initiative at stake in this fairly obscure district. San Francisco certainly has more pressing issues and concerns.

Yet the Board of Supervisors’ April 14 vote to reject Larry Mazzola Jr. and select Dave Snyder for that board says more about San Francisco’s political dynamics, the state of the American labor movement, the psychological impact of the recession, how the city will grow, and the possibilities and pitfalls facing the board’s new progressive majority than any in recent memory.

It was a vote that meant nothing and everything at the same time, a complex and telling story of brinksmanship in which both sides of the progressive movement arguably lost. And it was a vote that came at a time when they need each other more than ever.

"It was a win for the Newsom-oriented elements of labor," Sup. Chris Daly, who helped spark the conflict, told the Guardian.

The bloc of six progressive supervisors who shot down Mazzola — who helps run the powerful plumbers union and was the San Francisco Labor Council’s unwavering choice for an appointment that has traditionally been labor’s seat on the bridge board — is the same bloc the unions helped elected last year. It is also the same bloc that has been fighting the hardest to minimize budget-related layoffs.

The vote says a tremendous amount about the crucial alliance between progressives and labor, how that delicate partnership formed, and what the future holds.

PLUMBERS VS. PROGRESSIVES


The Mazzola name carries a lot of weight in San Francisco labor circles. The Web site for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38 (UA 38) features a photo of U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis standing between Larry Mazzola Sr. and Larry Mazzola Jr., the father and son team that runs the union.

But the Mazzolas and their union are also controversial. As the Guardian has reported ("Plumbers gone wild," 2/1/06), the union owns a large share of the Konocti Harbor Resort (which a lawsuit by the Department of Labor said was a misuse of the union’s pension funds) and owns the Civic Center Hotel, which tenants and city officials say has been willfully neglected by a union suspected of wanting to bulldoze and develop the site. The plumbers and other members of the building trades have also fought with progressives over development issues and generally back moderate-to-conservative candidates.

Sup. Chris Daly and several progressive groups locked horns with the union over the hotel a few years ago, and Mazzola Sr. responded by opposing Daly’s 2006 reelection campaign, targeting him with nasty mailers and donating office space to Daly’s opponent, Rob Black. Yet more progressive unions like Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents city employees, convinced the Labor Council to back Daly and union support helped Daly win.

So when Mazzola Jr. came before Daly’s Rules Committee last month, the supervisor unloaded on him, and Mazzola gave as good as he got, telling Daly he didn’t want his support and defiantly telling the committee he didn’t know much about the bridge district, or its issues, but he expected the job anyway. Those on all sides of the issue agree it was a disaster.

"He was just patently unqualified for the position," Daly told the Guardian. Mazzola tells us his experience with labor contracts would be an asset for the position, but he admits the committee meeting didn’t go well. "I was caught off-guard and put in a defensive mode that altered my planned presentation," Mazzola told us.

Whatever the case, Sup. David Campos joined Daly in keeping the Mazzola nomination stuck in committee while the progressive supervisors privately asked labor leaders to offer another choice. "We said, ‘Give us anyone else as long as they can intelligently talk about transportation issues and the bridge district," Daly said.

But labor dug in. "It seemed as though the board was trying to dictate to labor what labor should do," Michael Theriault, who heads the San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council. And the other unions decided to back the trades, for a number of complicated reasons.

"The reason we supported Larry Mazzola is because this was important to the plumbers union," said Mike Casey, president of the Labor Council and head of Unite Here (which includes the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). "To the extent we can support the trades, we want to."

So when the four most conservative members of the Board of Supervisors used a parliamentary trick to call the Mazzola nomination up to the full board on April 14, the stage was set for the standoff.

THE STATE OF LABOR


Labor is truly a house divided, despite its universal interest in minimizing recession-related layoffs and taking advantage of a new Congress and White House that is generally supportive of labor’s holy grail: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it far easier to form unions.

The April 25 founding convention of National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in San Francisco caps a years-long battle between Sal Rosselli’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and their SEIU masters (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09). Rosselli and many others say SEIU under Andy Stern has become undemocratic and has climbed in bed with corporate America, while SEIU says getting bigger has made the union better able to advocate for workers. Both accuse the other of being power-hungry and not fighting fair.

"Inside SEIU, we’ve been struggling for four years basically on a difference of ideology and vision of what the labor movement is," Rosselli told us. David Regan, who SEIU named as a UHW trustee after ousting Rosselli, told us the union divisions have been overstated by the media. "Everyone is together in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act," he said, glossing over the fact that the legislation is in trouble and recently lost the support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Nationally, SEIU has been at war with all of the most progressive unions. The union recently made peace with the California Nurses Association after a particularly nasty struggle that involves many of the same dynamics as SEIU vs. NUHW, including accusations by CNA that SEIU was a barrier to achieving single-payer healthcare and was illegally meddling in its internal affairs.

SEIU is also accused of breaking up Unite Here, which fought the most high-profile labor battle here since Newsom became mayor in its contract fight with the big hotel chains. Last month, a large faction from the old Unite affiliated with SEIU, whose officials say they were just helping out after the end of what all knew was a bad marriage. "This is an example of a merger that didn’t take," SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette told us. But the building trades have backed Unite Here in its fight against Sterns’ SEIU. As Casey told us, "We’re in a major fight over our right to exist. There’s no other way to characterize it."

Yet in San Francisco, SEIU plays a different role. Local 1021 is the advocate for the little guy, representing front-line city workers who deliver social and public health services. It is the union facing the deepest layoffs in the coming city budget fight and is still negotiating contract givebacks with the Mayor’s Office. The union’s biggest allies in City Hall are the exact same six supervisors who voted against Mazzola.

So why this standoff? SEIU, Unite Here, and other progressive unions share the Labor Council with the building trades, which are traditionally more conservative and friendly with downtown and, these days, starting to really get desperate for work. "We have thousands of guys on the verge of losing their homes and families," Theriault said. "We are desperate."

That was one reason the San Francisco Labor Council last year cut a deal with Lennar Corporation to back Proposition G, which lets Lennar develop more than 10,000 homes in the southeast sector of the city. Daly, who wanted firmer guarantees of more affordable housing, was livid over the deal and has been at odds with the council ever since. But Daly said labor’s undercutting of progressives goes back even further and includes the early reelection endorsement Rosselli’s UHW gave Newsom in 2007, which helped keep big-name local progressives out of the race.

Tenants groups, affordable housing advocates, and alternative transportation supporters form the backbone of progressive politics, but on development projects, they often clash with the trade unionists who just want work. And labor expects support from the progressive supervisors. As Mazzola pointed out, "It was labor that got most of those guys elected."

But labor has its own fights on the horizon. SEIU fears deep city job cuts if the Mayor’s Office can’t be persuaded to start supporting new revenue measures. NUHW is getting challenged by SEIU for every member the try to sign up. And Unite Here’s hotel contracts start expiring in six months, reopening its battle with downtown hotel managers.

"We’re going to be in a real war with some of those employers," Casey said. Yet he said its actually good time for the otherwise distracting fights with SEIU over how nice to play with big corporations. "I embrace this fight because I think this is exactly the struggle we need to have in the labor movement."

But the Mazzola fight was one that neither side relished.

TO THE BRINK


The Board of Supervisors chambers was filled with union members flying their colors on April 14, but the progressive supervisors were just as unified, voting 6-5 to reject Mazzola. All that was left was the political posturing, the decision of what to do next, and the fallout.

"I am disappointed and surprised by the board’s action," Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who voted for Mazzola and publicly called it "a sin" to deny him) told us, refusing to confirm the private joy over the outcome that many sources say he has expressed. "What shocked me is a majority of the board turned their back on labor."

Daly admits that the standoff hurt progressives. "I’m not sure who came up with it, but it’s certainly true that the Sean Elsbernds of the world were able to take full advantage of the situation to drive a wedge between unions and progressives," Daly said.

Yet Daly noted how ridiculous is was for Sups. Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier to be publicly professing such fealty to labor while opposing revenue measures that would minimize layoffs. "At the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days," Daly said. "It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola."

Politically, Elsbernd says the progressives misplaced their hand. "I think the easy middle ground for them was to reject Mazzola and send it back to committee," Elsbernd said. Others echoed that point. Instead, supervisors appointed Synder, a widely acclaimed transportation expert who created the modern San Francisco Bicycle Coalition then started Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City) before becoming the first transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

"I don’t like how that went down, and I’m not happy with the inability of the board and labor to come to an agreement," Snyder told us. "I was stuck in the middle. I wish they had sent someone the board could have agreed to."

After the vote, Snyder went back to the SPUR office and resigned. SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf admits that labor leaders lobbied him to pressure Snyder to withdraw his name, and that he asked Snyder to do so. But Metcalf said he didn’t want to lose Snyder, whose vast knowledge of transportation issues as been a real asset to SPUR. "It was his choice and not my preference."

"This issue is not why I left SPUR, but it was the precipitating event," said Snyder, whose progressive values have occasionally differed from SPUR’s stands. "My sense of social justice has more to do with class issues than I was able to pursue at SPUR."

In fact, the clashes between progressives and developers (who are often backed by the trade unions) often revolve around how much affordable housing and community benefits will be required with each project approval. Snyder said the defining question is, "How do we accommodate development in San Francisco and maintain progressive values in a capitalist economy?"

He didn’t answer that question, but it is one the building trades also understand. Theriault said he supports holding developers to high standards, even when progressives have block certain projects to get them. "I’m okay with that as long as I see the endgame," Theriault said.

He expects the progressive board to listen to labor more than Daly or Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, who Theriault said helped shore up the progressive opposition to Mazzola (which Peskin denies). "With the exception of Daly, the relationships are reparable. But they have to show some independence from Daly and Peskin," Theriault said. "The real fear for me is what comes next."

Theriault was referring to things like new historic preservation standards that supervisors will soon consider, as well as the string of big development projects coming forward this year. And for progressives, they hope their efforts to save city jobs will be followed by labor support for progressive candidates for the Board of Supervisors (such as Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman) in next year’s election.

"The one thing I know about labor is, we’ve been screwed by politicians on the left and the right," Casey said. "Are we angry about this and disappointed? Yes. But does that mean the alliance between labor and progressives is dead? No. We’re going to work through this stuff, talk, take deep breaths, and move forward."

NUHW’s founding convention takes place April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

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