Tim Redmond

Missing the point on Hetch Hetchy

Zelda Bronstein
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Missing the point on Hetch Hetchy

So now we have to have a vote on tearing down Hetch Hetchy. That’s fine, let’s have the discussion. But let’s be honest about it: This isn’t just, or even primarily, a water issue. It’s really about electric power.

If you want to read the piece I wrote on this for Earth Island Journal, it’s here. I’ve written loads more over the years, enough to fill a couple of good-sized books. But let me try to make the point as simply as I can.

The dam would never have been approved by Congress if it were just a reservoir for San Francisco’s water. The reason the Raker Act, which authorized the destruction of Hetch Hetchy Valley, was approved was that the conservationists, who opposed the dam, were trumped by the public-power advocates, who argued that preventing private companies from controlling the electric power grid was so important that it justified environmental sacrilege. The dam was supposed to provide the centerpiece for a local public-power system that would prevent Pacific Gas and Electric Company from controlling the city’s energy system.

The history of Hetchy Hetchy isn’t about water — it’s about how that power never made it to San Francisco. You can read it in great detail here. I have spent weeks in the National Archives in DC researching this, and have thousands of pages of documents on it. You may or may not support the idea of the city running a public-power system, but it’s hard for anyone to argue that Congress intended anything else.

The city accepted the deal, built the dam, and has for almost a century ducked, bobbed, weaved, and tried everything possible to avoid kicking out PG&E.

So why keep the dam in place? I don’t believe the Restore Hetch Hetchy people when they say that the city can find other storage for its water needs. Tear down the dam and we’ll be sucking water out of the Delta soon enough. But forget that — let’s assume we could conserve enough water that we didn’t need that reservoir.

We’d still have to replace a buttload of electric power. The city’s hydropower system generates 1.7 billion kilowatt hours a year, enough to power more than 400,000 homes — and does so without producing an ounce of CO2. Although there are other powerhouses in the system, we’d lose almost half of its capacity if we tore down the dam.

It seem to me that existing large hydro, while imperfect, is a more environmentally sound form of electricity generation than coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear — and right now, those are the alternatives.

Soon enough the city will have enough small-scale distributed generation, mostly rooftop solar, to get rid of both PG&E and the dam. Count me as a supporter. But we’re not there yet.

In the meantime, if we’re going to have this discussion, let’s talk about electricity, and PG&E, and the Raker Act, not just water and the once-pristine valley.

 

 

 

Gascon comments on Lee perjury allegations

Zelda Bronstein
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Gascon comments on Lee perjury allegations

Luke Thomas from Fog City Journal showed up at a press conference District Attorney George Gascon was holding on another topic, and threw in a question about the allegations that Mayor Ed Lee lied under oath before the Ethics Commission. Gascon’s comments were, as I would expect, pretty well couched in political-DA language, but the man who initially filed the domestic violence charges that set off this legal episode came down clearly on the side of having Ethics investigate further:

Luke sent me a transcript of Gascon’s full remarks, to wit:

“I think that the first thing that we have to do is we have to allow the Ethics Commission to continue what they’re doing. This is an ongoing hearing by the Ethics Commission. The voters of San Francisco, through the Charter, gave the Ethics Commission a tremendous amount of power — they wanted a very robust process. The Ethics Commission has the ability to call witnesses and put witnesses under sworn testimony and I think it is appropriate for the Ethics Commission to continue to inquire into this. Once they have completed the process, we will evaluate and, if appropriate, we will move accordingly. If the evidence surfaces that we have sworn testimony to indicate that perjury has taken place then we will certainly evaluate whether that will be appropriate to prosecute. At this point, we need to let the Ethics Commission do its work.”

I got in touch with Gascon’s press person, Stephanie Ong Stillman, and she confirmed that the DA thinks right now Ethics ought to be handling this:

“We don’t want to interfere with the Ethics Commission’s ongoing process.
All we know is what’s being reported in the newspapers.  These allegations
arose in the context of an ongoing Ethics Commission hearing, therefore the
Ethics Commission is the most appropriate body to look into this matter.”

Doesn’t sound like Gascon is eager to launch his own inquiry. But he’s at least interested in hearing what the key witnesess have to say — and he seems to agree that they should be placed under oath.

In fact, Gascon seems to be saying that he will look to Ethics to conduct the initial investigation — which just puts more pressure on the commissioners to allow Mirkarimi’s lawyers to put Walter Wong and Christina Olague on the stand.

I wonder if Lee is starting to regret setting off this whole spectacle. If he’d just demurred and allowed the voters to weigh in with a recall election, he could have avoided what may be a costly political mistake.

Oh, and by the way: Since the Chron made a huge deal out of Ivory Madison’s sworn statement — much of which was tossed out as inadmissible — it’s worth reading the entire statement of Eliana Lopez, which is posted here.

If Mayor Lee lied

Zelda Bronstein
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If Mayor Lee lied

What’s going to happen to Mayor Ed Lee?

That’s the big question after a series of news reports have suggested that the mayor was less-than truthful under oath in his statements to the Ethics Commission. If he actually lied on the stand, that would be considered perjury, which is a felony.

But the reality is that the mayor’s not going to jail. First of all the District Attorney’s Office would have to investigate and file charges — and does anyone really think this DA, George Gascon, is going to subpoena Walter Wong and demand that he talk under oath about his interactions with Lee (who is a close friend)? I think Gascon ought to do it; there’s clear evidence that a crime may have been committed, and the public has a right to know about it, but I suspect that will never happen.
And even if the DA pushed, and Wong told the truth, and the truth contradicted the mayor, would a jury believe Wong over Lee?

It’s really hard to prove perjury. Maybe one of Lee’s staffers talked to Wong and the mayor wasn’t directly involved. Maybe the recollections of the two men have faded in the past few months. Maybe the mayor’s defense would be able to throw up enough chaff that nobody in the courtroom could figure it out.

So it’s not going to be about a criminal case against the mayor. But the revelations of what’s gone down here go far beyond any possible perjury indictment.

For starters, Ross Mirkarimi’s lawyers have every right and responsibility to demand that the Ethics Commission members hear from Debra Walker, Walter Wong, and — I would argue — every member of the Board of Supervisors. Here’s why:

The crux of Mirkarimi’s legal case at Ethics is that the mayor had no grounds to remove him from office — and that Lee never gave Mirkarimi due process or a chance to explain himself. The way the suspended sheriff tells it, the mayor never asked for an explanation of what happened that New Year’s Eve, never tried to talk to Eliana Lopez — never, in short, did any investigation into the incident before deciding the file misconduct charges (except for talking to Ivory Madison).

The way the mayor tells it, Mirkarimi refused to provide an explanation.

That distinction is critical, and the only basis for deciding what happened is for the judges — the commissioners — to use their best information and judgment about who’s telling the truth.

In other words, the mayor’s credibility is central to the entire case.

So if there’s any evidence that Lee lied about his discussions with Walter Wong or about whether he talked to any supervisors, then the commissioners would have the responsibility to consider that when evaluating the rest of his testimony. If you can’t believe everything he said, can you believe anything he said?

Some commissioners may argue that it’s not their business to determine if the mayor perjured himself, and on one level, that’s true — Ed Lee isn’t on trial here. But his credibility either makes or breaks the case. So the panel needs to hear from witnesses who can address that question.

Then there’s the much larger, more disturbing possibility that the mayor sought to influence (or might have been in a position to influence) members of the Board of Supervisors, who will be sitting as the final judges of Mirkarimi’s fate.

There’s a reason that the City Attorney’s Office has advised board members not to talk about the case. They’re sitting in a judicial role, and they can’t legally fulfill that obligation if there’s any indication they’ve already made up their minds. And if the mayor has talked to any of them — and there’s any indication at all that anything he said could be seen as seeking to influence their votes — well, in a courtroom you’d call that jury tampering. It’s a little different in a political forum, but still: Any supervisor who had a conversation with the mayor will be under pressure to recuse himself or herself — and every recusal helps Mirkarimi.

It doesn’t matter how many supervisors are in the room, in the country, recused or otherwise unable to vote — the mayor still needs nine to remove the sheriff. Three recusals and the whole thing collapses.

That’s why all of this is so fascinating and potentially explosive.

Oh,and by the way: When Lee set this process in motion, he should have known that he’d be testifying under oath and that anything he said or did might come out. You’d think he’d have been a little better prepared. 

So what’s going to happen to Ed Lee? Legally, nothing. But he may have done serious damage to his own case.

Brown, Pak, and Olague

Zelda Bronstein
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Brown, Pak, and Olague

Christina Olague was a great planning commissioner. I’ve always liked her, and when she was appointed we pointed out how strongly she was rooted in the progressive community.

Olague has strong progressive activist credentials, from working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition to protect low-income renters during the last dot-com boom to her more recent community organizing for the Senior Action Network. She co-chaired the 2003 campaign that established the city’s minimum wage and has been actively involved in such progressive organizations as the Milk Club, Transit Riders Union, and the short-lived San Francisco People’s Organization.

She also served two terms on the Planning Commission — appointed by Board of Supervisors then-President Matt Gonzalez in 2004 and reappointed by then-President Aaron Peskin in 2008 — where she was known for doing her homework on complicated land use issues and usually landing on the progressive side of divided votes.

We’ve had some disagreements since she took office — particularly around 8 Washington. (I also disagreed with the Labor Council on that one, and only three of the supervisors agreed with me.) And it’s not the first time an elected official I supported turned around and infuriated me on a development vote.

I want Olague to succeed; I want her to come to us in the fall with a record that makes us want to endorse her for a full four-year term. She’s been talking seriously about violence in the district and about young people, predominantly African Americans, getting killed. I feel like she wants to do the right thing.

But her reelection effort is starting to feature some bad actors.

At a recent fundraiser in Chinatown, former Mayor Willie Brown, who ranks as one of the most corrupt public officials in modern San Francisco history and whose administration was a disaster for poor and working-class people (he once even said that poor people ought to just get out of town because this city is too expensive for them), stood up and made a speech, warmly endorsed Olague and said he would be with her “all the way.” Olague then thanked Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker, for “all of her support over the last few months.”

This makes me nervous. And it hasn’t helped my nerves that I’ve been trying to talk to Olague about these issues for the last week, and she keeps avoiding the conversation by not returning calls or cutting conversations short when I do reach her.

Willie Brown, with his Chron column, has taken on this funny, warm, man-about-town persona, but when he was running City Hall, everything was about money. He cut deals right and left that destroyed communities and neighborhoods. He oversaw, aided and encouraged what we called the “Economic Cleansing of San Francisco.” Tens of thousands of working-class people, artist, writers, young people … were driven out of the city by a steamroller of gentrification — all with the mayor’s blessing.

Now he’s working as a private attorney, and last time we checked was getting $200,000 a year to represent PG&E. We have no idea what other big corporate clients he has or what he does for them — but it’s clearly not writing legal briefs and handling litigation. He gets paid for being a political fixer. For the bad guys.

And he’s going to be with Olague “all the way.”

Damn.

Ed Lee gets frisky

Zelda Bronstein
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Ed Lee gets frisky

I knew Mayor Ed Lee was going to be more friendly to developers that I would have liked, and I knew he’d be a tough sell on new taxes, but I didn’t expect to see him talking about a program that has racial profiling and civil liberties issues written all over it.

Yeah, we could find some weapons if we simply gave up all rights to privacy. Yeah, if we put a metal detector on Market Street and strip-searched everyone who passed by we’d find some contraband. But seriously — I don’t think even my crazy trolls think this is a good idea.

 

 

The cost of shorter school days

Zelda Bronstein
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The cost of shorter school days

Everyone agrees that Jerry Brown is taking a huge gamble, putting big automatic education cuts in his budget in the hope that he’ll convince voters to approve his tax hikes in November. It may be a wise political move: Most voters in California seem to support education spending, even if they still (wrongly) think the state wastes too much money on other services. And they seem to like teachers, even if they think (wrongly) that most other public employees are overpaid and get overly generous pensions. In other words, if you ask voters whether the state needs more money in general, you might get a No — but if you ask whether schools should be cut even further, you might get a better answer.

Still: If this thing goes down, California’s got a disaster on its hands. Already, local school districts are making deep cuts in budgets that were already way too small. And since everything else is already gone, the main thing on the block is the length of the school year.

It used to be 180 days. Now it’s down to 176. And it could go as low as 160. That’s terrible for students — you really can’t eliminate class time and not harm education. It’s also really bad for working parents who have kids too young to be left alone (and some of us have good reason to believe that even high school students shouldn’t be left alone at home all day with nothing to do except get in trouble).

What do parents do when there’s an unexpected furlough day that isn’t a work holiday? How about if there are suddenly 20 (twenty) furlough days, four full weeks of additional time that the kids aren’t in school?

Well, if it’s a day or two they take time off from work if they can — costing both worker and employer money — or they pay someone to watch the kids, costing the worker money. This isn’t trivial for any of us, and it certainly isn’t trivial for low-income families. It means some kids will be home alone, which is fine for the Model Middle Schooler, but really, how many of them do we know?

And Jesus — nobody gets four weeks of paid vacation time. It’s already costing parents a fortune to put kids in summer camp for eight or ten weeks; add four more and I don’t know what people will do.

So basically, furlough days are a tax on working parents (and their employers). Which means it’s a regressive tax that his hardest on those least able to pay. And that’s assuming the tax plan actually passes — if it goes down, expect the furlough days to go up — and the hidden tax burden on working parents to get worse.

Then there’s class size, which is going up now, and could go up a lot more. I’ve volunteered in the SF public schools and I’ve seen the difference between a classroom of 20 kids and a classroom of 30, and it’s huge. At the K-3 level, more than 20 students in the classroom seriously hinders learning. Even in 5th grade, 30 kids is too many for one teacher.

I realize there’s not a lot left to cut in the state budget (although I think I could shift enough money from the prison system to fully fund the schools, but that’s not even on the table). K-12 education is a huge ticket and is going to have to take big hits.

And again: As a political move, threatening to hack the legs out from under the state’s education system will probably bring in some votes in November. But I agree with Calitics — it’s a really scary bet.

Taxes and pension reform

Zelda Bronstein
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Taxes and pension reform

Our friends at CalBuzz, who are almost always right, have a point when they say that the right wing is going to use the lack of comprehensive pension reform against Jerry Brown’s tax measure in the fall. That’s unless the Legislature does something productive in August, which is always a challenge.

But whenever I hear this kind of analysis, I think about some of the political campaigns I’ve seen — the tobacco tax is an excellent example — and I wonder: Will it really make a difference?

No matter what the Leg does, Joel Fox and company are going to raise a ton of money and attack the tax plan — and no matter what happens in August, they’ll use public employees, and public employee pensions, as a flash point.

Brown could propose eliminating every dollar of pension spending tomorrow — and he’d wind up in court, because a lot of this is mandated by contracts. But even if he could get away with it, the righties would still harp about pensions. Because even if we weren’t paying modest pensions today, we used to — and in these campaigns, the facts don’t matter at all. See: Prop. 29. The truth is irrelevant when this much money is involved.

I guarantee the anti-tax groups will find some overpaid public employees and a couple of folks who spiked their pensions and they’ll plaster it all over the airwaves. And the fact that Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento are working 23 hours a day to try to craft a reform plan won’t matter a bit. Even if the reform plan passes, it won’t be enough for these clowns — and if they can outspend Brown’s side by 5-1, well … start holding bake sales for your local public school.

And by the way, who’s going to put up a lot of the money for the Jerry Tax Plan? Public-sector unions.

My point is not that Brown and the Legislature should ignore pension reform (although, as Calbuzz also notes, public-employee pensions aren’t the major cause of the state’s fiscal problems). I know it’s a huge political flashpoint, and the Righties have done an exceptional job at blaming union members for just about everything wrong with the state, and most people now believe that pensions are bankrupting us all and saddling our kids (who will work nonunion jobs with no pensions) with mountains of debt.

(Wait a second. Two wars? More than a trillion dollars wasted? The repeal of the CA vehicle license fee? Prop. 13? But never mind that; the debt’s coming from pensions.)

The missed opportunity here, and the move I wish Brown had been willing to make, was to combine the two in the same package, to wit:

We’re going to ask the public employees, who have already taken tens of millions in pay cuts and furloughs and suffered huge layoffs, to suffer even more and give up part of their pension package. And we’re going to ask everyone who benefits from the Bush tax cuts and all of the corporations who benefit from loopholes in the state code to take a proportional haircut.

Proportional — that is, if a union worker who gets a (typical) $30,000 a year pension has to pay 15 percent more of his or her paycheck a year into the pension fund, then a hedge-fund manager who makes $50 million a year has to pay 15 percent more of that paycheck to help fund for education and public services.

Everyone suffers, equally. Come on, Jerry — put that on the ballot and make Joel Fox fight it.

Thick petition against a big project

Zelda Bronstein
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Thick petition against a big project

My old friend Sue Hestor stopped by my house June 24 to ask if any of my neighbors might want to sign the referendum petition on 8 Washington. She was carrying a clipboard with a document the size of a phone book attached to it. Almost 600 pages, neatly bound.

I flipped through it. Lots and lots of background documents on the project, nothing anyone’s ever going to read. But thanks to some slick moves by the developer, Simon Snellgrove, supported by his allies on the Board of Supervisors, the referendum petition has to have all of that material attached.

See, the petition seeks an election to overturn a piece of legislation. Doesn’t happen often in San Francisco, and as far as I know, it’s never been successful. State law, of course, says that you have to show people the bill you want to overturn.

But when activists in Bayview Hunters Point tried to run a referendum campaign on the area’s redevelopment plan, they lost before they even had a chance. The City Attorney’s Office ruled that each petition had to include the entire redevelopment plan, all 62 pages. Since the petitions didn’t include every single page of that plan, the signatures were rejected.

In this case, Snellgrove’s crew made sure that the final legislation approved by the supes included numerous mentions of other documents that were, in legal terms, “included by reference.” Lots of documents. And all of them had to be copied, bound and attached to every set of petitions that every circulator carries.

It’s a bear: You can’t send petitions around by mail, you can’t carry a whole stack to a big event … and it costs $18 to print and bind a set. The foes of 8 Washington will need at least 1,000 sets to get the required 28,000 signatures. That’s $18,000, just to get started.

Which would clearly appear to be a chill on the rights of the people to force a ballot referendum.

Still, they soldier on. Hestor told me she’s “fundraising like crazy” to get enough money not to pay signature-gatherers but just to print the petitions. Jon Golinger, who’s helping run the campaign, says he confident there will be more than enough copies to do the job.

So if you want to get a little exercise for your arms (don’t laugh –one petitioner is already having arm problems lugging this stuff around) and you’re interested in helping out, check out the campaign HQ at 15 Columbus or call 415-894-7008. There’s a rally Saturday/30 at 10am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting 8 Washington on the ballot

Zelda Bronstein
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Putting 8 Washington on the ballot

The fall ballot’s going to be crowded — and one of the issues that may face a vote is the future of the 8 Washington condo complex, the waterfront multi-zillionaire housing that the city doesn’t need.

Opponents of the project have filed for a referendum on the Board of Supervisors approval, and they’re meeing Satruday June 23 at 15 Columbus at 10am to start the process of gathering signatures. It’s not easy — they need 28,000 signatures in 28 days, and this, I suspect, isn’t going to be one of those money-heavy deals with a lot of paid gatherers.

Former City Attorney Louise Renne will be there to lead off the festivities.

Me, I’d love to see this on the ballot in a high-turnout year when six supervisorial seats are up. Because it’s a great issue to discuss: Who is San Francisco building housing for, and why?

Is it ok that more than 80 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy or rent a median-priced home? Is it ok that virtually all of the new housing getting constructed is out of reach to virtually all of the people who work here?

Is that in any way sustainable?

 

Gosh, we need more condos for millionaires

Zelda Bronstein
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Gosh, we need more condos for millionaires

I guess it’s really, really important for San Francisco to build more housing for the very rich because there’s just such a profound need for it. In fact, the demand for million-dollar condos is so high, and the supply so tight, that the folks at Rincon Tower (which is hideous) are bringing in celebrities to try to sell the last few units.

You don’t find many mid-range and affordable units sitting on the market; in fact, there’s a long waiting list and a lottery for affordable housing. Because there’s more demand than supply. On a policy level, one would think that the city would seek to match supply and demand (since the free market clearly isn’t doing it). But no: SF continues to approve housing for people who don’t need it and won’t balance that out with the level of affordable housing that IS desperately needed.

Smart.

Corporations are people, but I guess unions aren’t

Zelda Bronstein
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Corporations are people, but I guess unions aren’t

So seven of the Supreme Court Justices, including all of the ones who voted for corporate free speech in Citizens United, have decided that unions aren’t the same as corporations and don’t have the same political rights.

The court ruled 7-2 that unions can’t use their members’ dues for political campaigns unless they ask first. That doesn’t sound so awful; gee, if you’re going to take my money and spend it on a candidate I don’t like, shouldn’t I get a chance to say no? (Of course, that’s already the case, and this ruling is pretty narrow — the union wanted to raise the money and offer refunds to members who asked. The court says you have to ask first.)

But the distinction here is interesting. Corporations don’t have to ask their shareholders in advance before they donate money to political campaigns. In fact, they don’t have to ask shareholders — who, in theory, are the members of the corporation, the owners, the ones whose financial interests are most directly at stake — at all.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. can use millions of dollars of its shareholders’ money to support candidates and causes — and if you’re one of the poor retired workers who holds PG&E stock as part of your pension, you think you have any say? No, you don’t.

So what this does is further erode the power of the one large established group that can sometimes spend close to what big business does, and that’s organized labor.

Behind the CBI chief’s “resignation”

Zelda Bronstein
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Behind the CBI chief’s “resignation”

Matier and Ross reported today that Vivian Day, the director of the Building Inspection Commission, was stepping down and taking another city job (at the same pay). But there’s a lot more to the story.

A leader in the Residential Builders Association who serves as the chair of the Building Inspection Commission was behind the move oust Day — and he did it without informing other members of his panel.

Angus McCarthy, the residential builder representative on the commission, hauled Day into a meeting that involved a senior representative of the city’s personnel department to discuss his desire for her to resign, emails obtained by the Bay Guardian show.

Micki Callahan, the city’s Human Resources Director, met with Day and McCarthy May 22, the emails show, and Day was offered an alternative job with the city at equal pay if she would step down.

 “I was asked to ‘resign’ by June 30, 2012 by Angus who stated he was speaking on behalf of the Commission who wanted a change in leadership,” Day wrote in a  May 23 email to McCathy and Callahan. “I understand that I serve at the will of the Commission, but I was surprised by the fact that people were being interviewed for my position without some notice to me as a courtesy.”

She noted that she didn’t want to resign and needed to hear that the entire commission was backing up McCarthy.

The problem: At least two other commissioners I spoke to told me they had no idea the commission chair was calling on the director to resign, and one of them, Debra Walker, said she wasn’t looking for a change.

“They’re trying to get rid of Vivian because she isn’t corrupt,” Walker told me.

In a May 23 email, Callahan wrote that “we wanted to you explore with you your interest in pursuing a voluntary resignation in a way that was respectful of your contributions to the city.”

But Day was having none of it, and complained by email that she was being harassed by the builders. The previous commission chair, Mel Murphy, also tried to drive her out.

“I spent a year being harassed in front of the Commission because I would not bend Civil Service rules to accommodate [Murphy’s] wishes regarding staff,” Day noted.

By law, the BIC must include a residential builder, a residential landlord, a licensed structural engineeer, an architect, a tenant, a nonprofit housing provider and a member of the general public.

I contacted Day, who told me that she couldn’t comment. McCarthy told me by email that “this is a personnel matter between the Director and Human Resouces, [so] I have been advised by the City Attorney’s office to avoid commenting on the matter.”

Myrna Melgar, who holds the public seat, told me that McCarthy had never spoken to her about Day and that the commission had held no meetings to discuss her job or tenure. Melgar told me that she’s not sure Day is strong enough on tenant issues, but never told McCarthy that she wanted a new director.

There doesn’t seem to be widespread concern among tenants about Day’s performance. Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who works at the Housing Rights Committee, told me he and his colleagues have no issues with her.

Walker confirmed there had been no discussions about Day resigning among the commissioners. Any move to oust the director would require a closed-sesion meeting on the topic, and none has been scheduled, Walker said.

But according to a May 24 email from Day to Callahan, “Angus did state that the ‘commission wanted a change in leadership.’”
She added: “The Commission has not been convened to discuss this issue and I do not want to voluntarily resign. … If the Commission wants a change, thyen the Commission should be respectful to me and not back door and try to force a voluntary resignation from me.”

All of which leaves two obvious possibilities: McCarthy went ahead and tried to push Day out, claiming that he had the rest of the commission behind him — or else McCarthy spoke privately with several other commission members to line them up, in which case he violated the Brown Act, which mandates that such discussions be held only at a scheduled meeting with a quorum present.

The residential builders’ anger with Day is a bit puzzling. She hasn’t been exactly a rabid anti-development type. The Chron says the mayor thought she was “an obstructionist blocking the mayor’s efforts to build more housing and boost neighborhood economic development,” but it’s hard to see any evidence of that.

I asked Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a big fan of McCarthy and an ally of the mayor, if he had seen any problems with Day. “I’ve never met her,” he emailed tersely.

One person close to DBI had a different take on the situation. “The RBA has been running the department for years,” this person, who asked not to be named, told me. “Vivian wasn’t one of them. So they figured they might as well just put their own person in charge.”

Maybe I should move to France

Zelda Bronstein
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Maybe I should move to France

I know that would make some of my happy trolls even happier. But then I’d have to learn French. And I don’t know if the bars in Paris have Bud Light.

But when you look at the agenda of the new French government, it’s pretty much what a lot of us, including a lot of non-Socialists, have been advocating for the United States: Tax the rich, end tax breaks for banks and oil companies, hire a lot of new teachers, invest in youth and the future, don’t get your pants in a wad about short-term deficits, legalize same-sex marriage … damn. They’ve got it all.

Or rather, Fichu. Ils l’ont obtenu tous.

Did I get that right?

Of course, the critics are terrified about the same things they all seem terrified about whenever anyone in San Francisco talks about local taxes on the wealthy: OMG! The rich will all leave town and go live in Fresno! See:

The pledges have prompted fears of an exodus of wealthy footballers and pop stars to lands beyond the French border.

I suppose. But I suspect a lot of wealthy Parisians will stay Parisians even if their taxes go up. They live there for a reason, as do San Franciscans, and Californians. What, you’re going to play football in France and live in Antwerp? That’s not going to go over too well.

So this will be a fine experiment here. If France doesn’t collapse and Paris doesn’t empty out and the world doesn’t end, maybe we’ll all learn a lesson. Oui?

 

 

 

Landlords and government, or WTF Chuck Part Two

Zelda Bronstein
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Landlords and government, or WTF Chuck Part Two

If you didn’t get enough from my latest WTF, Chuck, Calitics has a nice addition. In a discussion about the governor’s tax proposal and the likely opposition, Brian Leubitz notes that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is going to run its usual playbook: Government is fat, government is bad — oh, and here’s a few examples of wasteful spending. Notes Leubitz:

Of course, take any large organization and you can find some dumb stuff going on. And, the California government is such and organization. But, just because there is a small stupid thing going on, doesn’t mean that we should just toss the big, smart things that go on every day. Like, you know, educating our children, maintaining our streets, and so on. California government is simply too big to fail.

Yet, that is where we are headed. With the continued pessimism and me-first attitudes of the anti-tax organizations, we are stuck on a 20th century budget in a 21st century reality.

Yes: In San Francisco city government, there are small stupid things going on. There are overtime issues and (some) pension issues, and somewhere, somebody’s probably getting an extra welfare check. You simply cannot have a $6 billion budget and not have some types of waste. Anyone who has ever run anything larger than a lemonade stand knows that.

And if that’s what the press focuses on, then we’re going to fail as a country, a state and a society.

WTF, Chuck: Those poor exploited landlords

Zelda Bronstein
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WTF, Chuck: Those poor exploited landlords

In my continuing attempt to make sense of the politics of the Chron’s C.W. Nevius, I present: What The Fuck, Chuck — the saga of the poor landlord.

I’ll try to be fair: There’s nothing inherently wrong with this story. I don’t like rich people taking advantage of anything, particularly rent control. It’s true that there are a few people who are cheating, good for Chuck to expose them (tho he didn’t exactly name names). You can’t make better copy than a family that moves to Hawaii (!) and keeps a rent-controlled house in the Richmond. (Of course, maybe the parents needed to be there for a couple of years for work, and were hoping to return to their family home and the landlord wouldn’t allow sublets, but whatever. Sounds horrible.)

And I’m not excusing it for a minute.

But I’ve never seen Nevius write a story about a family that can remain in this city only because of rent control, or a longterm tenant being forced out by the Ellis Act to create “homeownership” opportunities for a wealthier person who can buy a tenance in common, or a landlord who lies, cheats and abuses tenants to get rid of them so he or she can raise the rent — and those are far, far more common occurences. Those are problems that happen every day in this city.

It’s always about the poor landlords.

Yeah, there are bad tenants. But anyone on the front lines of the renatl-housing struggles in San Francisco can tell you that the abuses by the property-owning class radically exceed the harm caused by the tenant class.

I feel about this the same way I feel about the ongoing stories on bloated city employee pay and pensions. Yes, it’s true: Some city employees game the overtime and pension systems and in effect pluck money from the pockets of the taxpayers. I see no reason why a police chief who retires at 55 should get $250,000 a year for life.

But it’s also true that a lot of city employees earn a basic middle-class salary and get a pension of maybe $30,000 a year, which is hardly excessive — and the fact that the private sector quit giving pensions decades ago doesn’t mean that the public sector is wrong to do it. But all of these stories create a powerful Big Lie mythology of bloated public payrolls, which undermines any effort to raise taxes for desperately needed public services.

You tell people enough tales about the poor landlord and the rich tenants and you start to make rent control look like a bad idea. Which is about the worst thing you can do in San Francisco today, where the existence of any middle class at all is primarily the result of rent control — and if anything, rent control ought to be stronger.

In other words: A little perspective here, please.

 

 

Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

Zelda Bronstein
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Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

There are plenty of reasons I like the David Campos free Muni for youth plan. Anything that gets the next generation used to seeing Muni as the primary form of transportation in town is a good idea. It’s a great benefit for low-income kids (and around SF these days, the only ones who we’re giving any benefits to are businesses that get tax breaks, and those breaks are worth far more than the modest cost of the Campos plan). But it’s particularly important this year, because the school district is in serious financial straights and is probably going to eliminate most school-bus transportation next year. So poor kids and kids whose parents don’t have cars will have a harder time getting to school.

The supervisors approved this, and the mayor signed off on it — but some of the money is supposed to come from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, made up of regional representatives, and Campos is having a tough battle.

The MTC staff recommended that SF get $4 million in regional transit money for the idea, but not all, or even most, of the 16 members of the panel want to see one city get money for something all of them would love to do.

But: Someone has to try this as a pilot project, and SF, with the highest per-capita transit ridership, is a good place to start.

Sup. Scott Wiener is also on the MTC, representing San Francisco, and he’s totally against the free Muni for youth plan. And when it come up at an MTC committee, he was willing to vote for it — “I realize I lost that battle, and at the MTC I’m representing San Francisco,” he said — but only if MTC stipulated that no additional city money would go to the program.

And that kind of screws the whole thing up, since it will be hard to do with just the $4 million.

Ugh. Such a great idea, for a fraction of the money we’re handing out like hot dogs to everyone who asks for a tax break. Why don’t the poor kids get a break for once?

Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

Zelda Bronstein
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Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

I’ve had issues with Bevan Dufty. Oh, lord, I’ve had issues. He so often voted the wrong way on the Board of Supervisors and was the only major candidate running for mayor who answered No to the affordable housing question at the Guardian mayoral forum.

But I have to say, he’s doing quite the creative job as the mayor’s homeless coordinator. I’ve always liked the idea of the “wet house” — a place where alcoholics can drink in safety. It’s basic harm reduction, something that sometimes conflicts with the prevailing wisdom on sobriety but will almost certainly save lives. He’s taking the right line on panhandling — the other day, he told me, he spoke in front of the Interfaith Council and complained about the notion of refusing to give money to panhandlers because they might use it for drugs and alcohol.

“Well,” he said, “there are people in this room who generate money for drugs and alcohol. What if that principle applied to your paycheck?”

(I always give money to panhandlers. I also spend part of my paycheck on Bud Light and bourbon. Deal with it.)

And now he’s got the puppy plan.

You can laugh at this all you want, and a lot of people will, but I think it’s a fabulous idea. It won’t solve homelessness, and I know that these little side trips can divert attention from the massive social problem that is housing costs and homelessness in this city, but still:

There are dogs that need to be adopted. There are lonely people who are in SROs who can adopt those dogs. It might keep some of them from panhandling. It will certainly make a number of canine and human creatures a lot more happy.

Remember PAWS? (One of my favorite groups.) These folks figured out in the worst days of the AIDS pandemic that having companion animals around made people’s lives better, and they worked to help people with AIDS keep their pets. Now they work with seniors and low-income people, providing support and services.

The dogs don’t care if their owners are living in an SRO; they’re happy to have a home. The people who might be isolated and stressed living alone and with very little money have a bit of light in their lives. Although a lot of SROs don’t take pets (and I get it — pit bulls on crack and fleas and shit), the Community Housing Partnership is working with Dufty on a pilot program, and if it works he cann push it further.

And that’s not the end. Under Sup. Scott Wiener’s recent legislation, dog walkers (thousand of ’em) are supposed to have some basic dog-training skills, and there aren’t that many places that offer those classes — but Dufty tells me he thinks maybe some low-income SRO residents can learn to teach dog training classes and make some money that way.

Again: Little stuff. I still want to tax the rich to provide housing as a human right for all. But things are not good on the streets of San Francisco, and every little bit helps.

 

 

PG&E’s latest fire problem

Zelda Bronstein
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PG&E’s latest fire problem

Sup. David Campos was at the fire on San Bruno Ave — the one that burned for two hours before PG&E crews managed to shut off a gas pipeline, and he told me the situation was a disaster. “PG&E had apparently done some work on the pipe but hadn’t documented it,” he said. “Nobody was there when we needed to shut it off. Two hours — that’s unacceptable.”

You’d think that after what happened in San Bruno, PG&E would have figured out how to respond to gas fires a little more quickly. You’d think someone in charge of that utterly screwed-up company would have made fire safety a priority. But no: Now PG&E has the normally quiet San Francisco fire chief pissed, has Campos calling for hearings on local gas pipeline safety and is on the proverbial hot seat again.

It’s as if nobody over there cares. What’s going to happen? The CPUC will impose a little fine? The city will demand some changes? So what? The monopoly utility can just ignore it all. The senior execs will still get their huge salaries and bonuses, any additional costs will be passed on to the ratepayers — and one of these days, another pipe will blow up and kill a bunch of people, and PG&E will say: Ooh, sorry about that.

And the next time PG&E throws a couple of dollars at some civic project, the mayor will forgive all the past problems and talk about what a great company it is.

Why do we put up with this?

The 8 Washington embarrassment

Zelda Bronstein
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The 8 Washington embarrassment

I wasn’t shocked by the vote on 8 Washington. I knew it was happening; I knew we’d lost when the EIR went through. I knew we couldn’t count on a solid progressive bloc any more. I knew that the lobbying was intense.

But I have to say, at the end of the day I was embarrassed. Because the supervisors sold the city cheap.

In the earlier board discussions, Sup. Christina Olague and Sup. Eric Mar mentioned their concerns about the heigh and bulk of the project and said they would work with the developer, Simon Snellgrove, on changes. But the final project was exactly the same size.

Olague and Sup. Jane Kim were concerned about the amount of parking; the developer agreed to cut 50 spaces. But the actual size of the garage won’t be reduced at all; the only promise: There won’t be valet parking, so maybe not so many cars will fit.

Yes, Snellgrove agreed to set aside some scholarships for low-income kids to swim in the pool, which is a great thing and I fully support it. For a project that, according to available figures, will net the developer $200 million in profit — according to Sup. David Chiu’s analysis, a 72 percent rate of return — the scholarship money is peanuts.

There’s an additional 50 cent parking levy to pay for surface improvements in the area.

But as Chiu asked at the June 12 meeting, “Is the city getting an appropriate level of benefits based on Snellgrove’s profits?” Project foe Brad Paul — a veteran of more than 30 years of the city’s development wars — doesn’t think so. “They got nothing,” he told me.

Here’s how it went down:

Chiu started off by introducing the board’s budget analyis, Harvey Rose. Rose said he’d reviewed the finances of the project, and concluded that the city would get $50 million less out of the project than the developer or the Port of San Francisco, which owns some of the land and is a primary proponent, had originally claimed. Chiu also noted that not all the documents were in the file, but nobody else seemed to care.

In fact, through most of the discussion — limited discussion — and final votes, it was pretty clear that nobody was swayed by any of the facts that Chiu put forward. This deal was done long before the board members took their seats.

Chiu offered a series of amendments, none of them terribly radical. He pointed out that the deal requires the city to pay the developer $5 million for open-space improvements. “That’s an anomaly,” Chiu said, and moved that it be removed.

Kim, who throughout the meeting was the strongest supporter of the project, argued that the city often reimburses developers for open space. More, she said, compared to what the city has asked other major residential developers to give, this project is just dandy. “I would not say this is not a fair deal for the city,” she told her colleagues.

The vote on the $5 million giveaway? Developer 6, SF 5. Siding with Snellgrove: Christina Olague, Scott Wiener, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Jane Kim. Siding with Chiu and project opponents: John Avalos, David Campos, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar. It’s an odd lineup — Cohen doesn’t always vote with the progressives, and I have to say it’s strange to see Kim and Olague siding with the four most conservative supervisors.

Chius’s second proposal: Since the city’s benefits were $50 million less than advertised, why not add $14 million to the affordable housing fee?
Developer: 7. Affordable housing: 4. Voting for the developer: Olague, Wiener, Chu, Elsbernd, Farrell, Kim and Mar.

Okay, one last try. Chiu suggested maybe just $2 million more for affordable housing. Wiener, as is he way, went off on his usual complaint that too much of the affordable housing money is for poor people and not enough for the middle class. The final vote:

Developer: 6. Affordable housing: 5. Voting for the developer: Olague, Wiener, Chu, Elsbernd, Farrell, Kim.

Kim, again, took the lead in promoting the deal on the final vote, saying that a parking lot and a private club were not a good use for the space and that “we are achieving here is a higher and better use for the land.” That’s what every developer talks about, by the way — higher and better use.

She also talked about One Rincon, that hideous tower next to the Bay Bridge that was approved after then-Sup. Chris Daly cut a deal with the developer that the San Francisco Chronicle denounced as a “shakedown.”

Kim said that, considering the much-smaller size of the Snellgrove project, the benefits were richer than the Rincon deal.

I never liked the Rincon deal — that tower’s a disaster, an ugly scar on the skyline, and there was nowhere near enough affordable housing money. That’s because I think that the city should be building six affordable units for every four market-rate units, that there’s no need for more housing for the very rich and that our current housing policy is a disaster. (The Guardian wrote an editorial at the time that said it was good that Daly had gotten that much money, but was dubious about the whole project. In retrospect, we were too kind.)

I think all my readers at this point know that. So does Daly.

But I asked the former supervisor anyway to comment on the difference between 8 Washington and One Rincon. His thoughts:

1. The Rincon Hill agreement was negotiated by the district Supervisor working together with the communities most impacted by the development. 8 Washington was opposed by the district Supervisor and many nearby residents.
2. Most people in the South of Market were not diametrically opposed to highrise development in that location. The Planning Department had been working on a Rincon Hill neighborhood plan and was recommending upzoning for the area.
3. Rincon Hill had no waterfront trust issues.
4. The Rincon HIll development impact fee was $25 per square foot (over and above the required inclusionary affordable housing fee even though the Mayor’s Office contended that over $20 per square foot would kill the deal.) According to Kim’s release, her 8 Washington deal netted an additional $2 million for affordable housing and a $.50 parking surcharge. This even though development in Rincon Hill is not as valuable as the northern waterfront.

Folks: I think the city got taken to the cleaners here. I’ll stipulate that I’m against this project for much broader reasons. And maybe I’m just an old commie who thinks that the richer you are, the more you should give back, that the affordable housing fees on the most expensive condos in San Francisco should be higher than normal, that if Snellgrove nets $200 million, then the city by definition left too much on the table.

But I don’t think I’m alone in believing that if you’re going to approve something that will make a developer this rich, and let him use public land to do it, on the waterfront, you ought to get your fair share. And that didn’t happen.

Embarrassing.

Another reason corporate shuttles are a problem

Zelda Bronstein
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Another reason corporate shuttles are a problem

They’re huge, and they block Muni stops, and they crowd into narrow streets. And now there’s another reason the city needs to get into the businesses of regulating private corporate shuttles:

The buses can get stuck on the hills.

Uptown Almanac has a great item, with excellent photos and a video, of a Google shuttle getting caught in Noe Valley, beached like a whale at 23rd and Chattanooga. A pickup truck tries in vain to haul the monster away.

Folks: The streets of SF’s neighborhoods weren’t designed for 50-foot luxury coaches. Someone’s got to write some rules about where these private shuttles can go — and where they can’t. 

Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

Zelda Bronstein
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Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

So Sup. Mark Farrell thinks the Board of Supervisors is ready to turn its back on the tenants movement and vote for legislation that would increase evictions, eliminate rental housing and undermine one of the most important pieces of tenant legislation to come out of City Hall in decades?

Gawd, I hope he’s wrong.

From the Examiner:

Similar proposals have gone nowhere at City Hall. Farrell acknowledged it has been a “third rail,” but he suggested the political climate has shifted. “This is a different Board of Supervisors and this is a different time,” Farrell said.

Yeah, it’s a different Board of Supervisors. Five years ago, the 8 Washington project would never have been approved in its current form. Five years ago, Ed Lee wouldn’t have been elected mayor.

But I don’t think this board is ready to abandon the tenant vote.

Making condo conversions easier is a huge deal. When San Francisco put a limit on condo conversions more than 20 years ago, it was a landmark law that put the preservation of affordable, rent-controlled housing over the needs of speculators. Over the past decade, the single greatest threat to tenants in this city is Ellis-Act evictions done to create tenancies in common. And the only check on more of that happening is the disincentive posed by the limits on condo conversions.

If Farrell gets his way, and TIC owners can bypass the conversion lottery, tenant organizations will be furious. There are, at best, five reliable pro-landlord votes on the board, so It’s not going to happen without either David Chiu, Christina Olague or Jane Kim siding with Farrell. A lot of things suprise me in local politics, but that would be a shocker.

 

Why does the mayor appoint supervisors?

Zelda Bronstein
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Why does the mayor appoint supervisors?

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors just found a replacement for Nadia Lockyer, who resigned in April (“amidst a drug and sex scandal,” the Chronicle notes, and you know how much journalists love to use that phrase). The four remaining members of the board deadlocked for a while, then settled on Union City Council member Richard Valle.

All of which makes me wonder, as I often do: Why does the Mayor of San Francisco get to fill vacancies on the Board of Supervisors?

Other county boards fill the vacancies themselves — and if you don’t think the SFBOS can handle that, remember that every two years the 11 contentious folks choose a president, and it doesn’t take more than a few hours, and not that long ago, they chose a mayor.

I don’t know any other situation where the executive gets to choose legislators. The governor doesn’t fill seats in the state Assembly. The president doesn’t fill vacancies in Congress. There’s an important balance of powers issue here, and it has played out to the detriment of democracy in the past. At one point, more than half of the sitting supervisors had been appointed by Mayor Willie Brown. There was no balance; the mayor called all the shots.

Imagine if, instead of the mayor secretly huddling with advisors and choosing a new supe, the Rules Committee took applications and nominations and then the full board, in open session, debated and discussed and voted. The outcome would reflect the much broader perspectives of 10 district supervisors — and the person chosen would owe a debt to all of his or her colleagues, not to the mayor.

You can make a good case that the mayor ought to fill vancancies in other elected offices (sheriff, city attorney, public defender etc.); those are, at least arguably, executive offices. Although I could also make the case that the 11 district-elected supervisors should make those calls.

But that’s a different issue. The clear and obvious anomaly here is that San Francisco’s chief executive gets to choose his own legislators in the event of a vacancy — and that’s just wrong.

Now, in Alameda if they can’t reach a decision, the governor steps in. In San Francisco, with 10 voting supes, it seems highly unlikely that we’d ever see a long-term deadlock, but the mayor could step in the break the tie in that case — or some other city official could, or you could come up with a dozen other solutions. The bottom line is that most of the time, as in Alameda, the board would come to if not a consensus, then a majority vote.

Who’s up for some Charter reform?

 

 

The Mirkarimi case: Did the city want to settle?

Zelda Bronstein
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The Mirkarimi case: Did the city want to settle?

The real news in the Ross Mirkarimi case isn’t the sheriff attempting to get the city to pay his legal fees; that’s just something he had to try but it was a long shot at best. The story that’s come out in bits and pieces since we broke it is far more interesting:

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, with or without the knowledge of his client the mayor, offered to begin discussions with Mirkarimi around settling the case — and the conflicting accounts of what went on show haw harsh this legal proceding has become.

Whatever you think about Mirkarimi’s actions on New Year’s Eve — and I’ve said many times that what he did was unacceptable — the intensity of the prosecution, particularly in the removal proceding, is unprecedented.

Some of the political fallout is clearly Mirkarimi’s fault. He bruised his wife, got bad advice early on, said the wrong things, and didn’t do enough to repair the damage. But now Mirkarimi’s lawyer is charging that the city attorney used a nasty legal gambit to try to convince the embattled sheriff to resign.

David Waggoner, in a TV interview with KGO’s Dan Noyes, and later in discussions with me, said that City Attorney Dennis Herrera offered to look for a way to keep the video of Mirkarimi’s wife out of the public eye — if Mirkarimi would take a financial settlement and resign from his elected position.

Mirkarimi told me the offer he heard from his lawyer put him in a terrible bind: Franky, the video contains nothing that hasn’t already been out, and won’t be the defining issue in the official misconduct case now before the Ethics Commission. But his wife, Eliana Lopez, was adamant that she didn’t want the 45-second clip on the Internet, where she — and more important, their three-year-old son — will have to live with it forever.

“They were using the needs of my family to pressure me,” Mirkarimi said.

Waggoner was pretty specific about his recollection of the settlement discussions. He said that after Herrera contacted him to say that he was willing to discuss settling the case, Waggoner made it clear that keeping the video sealed had to be part of any deal.

“We hung up, and then he called me back five minutes later to say that his government team was working on it, and he thought they could keep the video under seal,” Waggoner said. “The mayor and the city attorney were using the video as leverage.”

Hererra confirmed that he reached out to Waggoner to see if Mirkarimi’s legal team was interested in settlement discussions. But told me that Waggoner’s story was “absolutely, categorically untrue.” He insisted that he had no choice but to release the video, since several media outlets had requested it under the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance.

In a statement issued June 8, Hererra attacked not only Mirkarimi but his attorneys:

“Everyone involved in this case was well aware of the City’s legal obligations under the Sunshine Ordinance (which Ross Mirkarimi himself had a hand in drafting).  The City invoked the maximum allowable two-week extension after receiving Sunshine requests for the video, to allow other parties to seek a protective order.  But opposing counsel dropped the ball.  They didn’t get a protective order.  They didn’t seek Supreme Court review.  They didn’t raise the issue at the Ethics Commission hearing.  And as far as I know, [Lopez’s counsel Paula] Canny didn’t even bother to show up at the hearing.  So, I think it’s a little absurd now to be playing martyr.  These are lawyers representing a former lawmaker.  They have no excuse for not knowing the law.”

Wow. Sounds like the usually level-headed Herrera is one pissed-off attorney.

Interestingly, Mayor Lee told Noyes that he didn’t know anything about any settlement discussions. Either that’s false (the mayor could have been instructed by Herrera not to say anything) or Herrera was going ahead without the mayor’s knowledge or permission.

So let’s set aside for the moment the back-and-forth about who’s telling the truth and what was really involved in the negotiations. Here’s what’s not in any serious dispute:

Herrera, representing the mayor, was sufficiently motivated to settle the case before it got to the Ethics Commission that he personally called Mirkarimi’s attorney to see if there was any possibility of finding a way out. Again: Attorneys in the most bitter lawsuits are advised to seek settlement. But this isn’t in court, and no judge mandated a settlement conference.

Which suggests that the city attorney and possibly the mayor would be a lot happier if this case just went away. Maybe Lee doesn’t like the drama. Maybe Herrera thinks it would be best for Mirkarimi and the city to put this in the past and move on.

Or maybe they aren’t sure this case is such a slam-dunk winner.

There’s another interesting twist, too: Mirkarimi told me that he asked the Probation Department for permission to fly to Venezuala to see his son. There were no conditions on his guilty plea barring him from travelling outside of the country (what — they think he won’t come back? That he has run through all of his money and put himself heavily in debt to fight a case that he’s now going to run away from?) But when he made a formal request, it was denied.
That’s right — probation officials refused to let him go visit his son. Forget Mirkarimi — that’s not fair to the three-year-old kid who did nothing wrong at all and is suffering for it.

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