Sweet Melissa

Dicey Meeting Alert! Muni Crime Stories...

2009-11-21T12:56:33-08:00

BONUS MATERIAL: Check out Eve Batey's excellent take on the meeting here. N Judah here. City Insider here. Muni Diaries here. And StreetsBlog here.

Constant Readers,

I am on the newsletter list for a number of Supervisors. As a general rule, these hopelessly lame publications contain notices for events like Spaghetti and Fingerpainting night with Supervisor So-and-so at Somedogooder Community Center.

Yawn aaaaaand Delete.

But yesterday, I got Supervisor Dufty's newsletter. Imagine my glee at seeing that he's hosting a hearing on the Muni Bus Inspection Program. According to the email:

"I'm inviting anyone who has been a victim of crime on Muni to testify in the board Chambers (Room 250 of City Hall) and we will take public testimony at the very beginning so speakers are not inconvenienced."

Are you shitting me? Can I bring popcorn? I will NOT miss this.

Details:

City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee

11:00 am - Monday, November 23, 2009

City Hall Room 250

If there's a god, one (or both!!) of these ladies will be there. Nope. That expulsion of pent up frustration in "Fuck you!" never, ever gets old.

-Melissa

Not A Post About Mistermayor

2009-11-20T17:24:30-08:00

Constant Readers,

While the Brilliant Benjamin Wachs will provide is usual hilarious rundown of the Supe schedules on Monday, I give you the following political items to consider - none of which are related to Gavinwatch 2009.

1. On Monday, the Land Use Committee will again consider restricting all rental evictions to "just cause." Right now, only pre-1979 buildings have such restrictions and this law would extend those to all buildings in The City. (PDF here Download Just Cause Ordinance.)

2. On Tuesday, the Budget and Finance Committee will hold a special meeting (aren't they all special?) to consider Chris Daly's latest effort to save some 45-70 SEIU Local 1021 jobs, and keep about 450 others from demotions or position-shuffling. (Check out SFWeekly's article on why the numbers very depending on whom you ask.)

3. Also on Tuesday, the Board will issue official responses to three Grand Jury Reports: "Nonprofits, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly," "Pensions: Beyond Our Ability to Pay" and "TRUANTS CAN BE 'JOYFUL LEARNERS,' TOO: Unless Racism, Classism and/or Systematic Ineffectiveness Prevent Future Progress."

And as for what's going on this weekend? Click here to see my lovely BFF bringing the info.

-Melissa

Supes Hunt for SEIU Budget Dollars

2009-11-18T22:56:58-08:00

Back in August, I wrote that state budget cuts and worse-than-expected property tax revenue would mean that “November will be marked by painful budget adjustments. Mark your calendars.” Those of you who did should not be surprised that financial fights have already started at City Hall, and they will only get worse.

The Board of Supervisors is currently debating whether and how to avoid 45 to 70 layoffs and hundreds of demotions and transfers of nursing assistants and clerks who are members of Service Employees International Union Local 1021. In June, Mistermayor and the SEIU agreed to delay further layoffs until mid-November and to support revenue measures on November’s ballot. The hope was that a new tax would bring in cash so the cuts could ultimately be avoided.

Of course, tax measures polled miserably so none actually made it to voters. Now, the SEIU and progressives on the board are looking for another source of money to prevent the planned cutbacks. Recently we learned that The City can expect about $34 million from a federal government program to reimburse public hospitals for services, but the money has to go through the state, and no one is certain how long that will take. Supervisors Chris Daly and John Avalos are leading the charge to borrow against this promise of federal money to save SEIU jobs.

Plan A was to take a $7.5 million “loan” from The City’s general fund reserve to restore SEIU positions. That proposal failed before the Board of Supervisors last week because it did not have the requisite eight votes (supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd and Sophie Maxwell voted no).

Undeterred, Daly on Tuesday rolled out Plan B: Let’s take the $7.5 million from another pot of money already designated for the Department of Public Health. (The money is already appropriated to other public health salaries and benefits, a fact that didn’t seem to bother Plan B’s supporters.) This new proposal will be considered by the board’s Budget and Finance Committee next week. But because it also needs eight votes by the full board to pass, it will probably meet the same fate as Plan A.

Sure, one or more supervisors could change their vote and pass Plan B, but that’s unlikely given recent revenue revelations. In the days since Plan A failed, we have learned that property and payroll taxes have disappointed even our lowest expectations. The city controller’s quarterly budget report, released Monday, puts us at $45 million in the hole. (Report here in .pdf Download Q1 Status Report.)

Because we are bound by the City Charter to have a balanced budget, all departments are facing another round of cuts. To make matters worse, word from the state is that it’s short $6 billion for this fiscal year, which will likely affect local funding.

The current (and continuing) fight to save SEIU positions may be made even more fierce by the fact that elections for SEIU officials are set to take place in January, so the already-formidable union leadership has an incentive to demonstrate its mettle.

The Christmas tree is already up in Union Square, but the mood around City Hall is anything but festive.

Ima Miss Nate Ballard

2009-11-18T22:32:12-08:00

When Nathan Ballard announced Monday that he was stepping down from his position as Mistermayor’s chief spokesman, I’ll admit I was a little heartbroken. Ballard will stay on until February as an adviser, but it won’t be the same. Granted, he and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was great at his job and on more than one occasion I opened the paper to see one of his hilarious quotes that made my day.

Here are my five favorites:

On the Board of Supervisors passing up the lowest bidder on a sewage contract: “We’re facing a huge budget deficit and Aaron Peskin is throwing around money like Eliot Spitzer in a brothel.”

On a proposal to eliminate horse-drawn carriages in The City: “A ban on the horse and buggy? What’s next, a ban on powdered wigs, monocles and dueling?”

On new Bay to Breakers rules: “Don’t worry, you’ll still be allowed to dress up as Michael Phelps taking a bong hit.”

On the time Terry Childs locked city computers and would only give the password to Mistermayor: “Working for Gavin Newsom is sometimes like being in the middle of a novel by Tom Clancy. In this chapter, the mayor questions the hacker, who hands over the secret code.” (L.A. Times, July 25, 2008 - problem with the site.)

On a proposal that The City get into the business of dispensing pot: “The mayor will have to hash this out with public health officials. It’s the mayor’s job to weed out bad legislation. And to be blunt, this sounds pretty bad.”

Total Recall: Your Guide

2009-11-18T18:14:14-08:00

Constant Readers,

Yesterday I wrote that during public comment at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, several Bayview-Hunter's Point activists declared their intention to recall Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, whose district (District 10) contains BHP.

The dude who first announced it (and who appeared to be designated by the group as the Number One Spokesman) is named Daniel Landry and he claimed to be speaking on behalf of "we the community." Although it seemed pretty clear that "we the community" was mad at Maxwell because she watered down a resolution that would have directed the U.S. Navy to rebuild and re-talk to the BHP Restoration Advisory Board (RAB).

"We the community" was, methinks, a bunch of former and potential RAB members.

Several of you wrote and commented about the fact that no recall effort has made it to the ballot since the Gray White Panthers tried to unseat then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1983.

True, true. We've all gotten excited about some recall effort or another only to be disappointed that they never pan out. How can we ever learn to trust again? (Sniff!)

Still others of you are pissed and want to recall your own supervisors.

So, if you want to collect enough signatures to get a recall measure on the ballot here's the approximate number of registered voters who live in the target district who must sign the recall petition. (You should always get a little extra in case some get thrown out.) These figures are based on the number of registered voters in each district as of the May 2009 election and the requirements of California Elections Code section 11221.

DISTRICT 1 (Eric Mar) = 7,941

DISTRICT 2 (Michela Alioto-Pier) = 9,540

DISTRICT 3 (David Chiu) = 7,613

DISTRICT 4 (Carmen Chu) = 7,709

DISTRICT 5 (Ross Mirkarimi) = 7,528

DISTRICT 6 (Chris Daly) = 8,924 (Fun Fact: Daly was elected in 2002 with 6, 645 votes and re-elected in 2006 with 8,654 votes)

DISTRICT 7 (Sean Elsbernd) = 8,562

DISTRICT 8 (Bevan Dufty) = 8,052

DISTRICT 9 (David Campos) = 7,192

DISTRICT 10 (Sophie Maxwell) = 7,694

DISTRICT 11 (John Avalos) = 7,136 (Fun Fact: Avalos was elected with 6,918 votes)

The RAB folks seemed pretty motivated - and it was certainly a moment of excitement in an otherwise drab meeting - but the Maxwell recall effort isn't likely to go anywhere. Not only is it difficult to collect the required signatures, but Maxwell is termed-out in 2010 anyway, which makes it harder to mobilize opposition to her status. (Daly and Dufty are also termed-out.)

Still, "we the community" and the rest of y'all, should feel free to dream.

-Melissa

OMG! Board Meeting Dispatches

2009-11-17T15:58:44-08:00

Constant Readers,

I actually came down to City Hall today to watch the meeting because I heard that there would be a showdown over the SEIU Local 1021 layoffs, which were supposed to be voted on again this week. Word was that Mistermayor himself might show up to speak. (Basically, this morning Chris Daly amended the ordinance that would have taken the $7 million needed to save the Local 1021 jobs from the General Fund Reserve, and made it so that the money will come from another special reserve - this amendment means that the matter cannot be heard until next week.)

Dejected, others left the press booth after a while.

But they missed an announcement - made during public comment - by Bayview Hunters Point activists that they are launching a recall effort against Sophie Maxwell. The "deadbeat supervisor" they called her, and angrily accused her of neglecting the issues of their district (District 10).

According to one of the speakers, they need 20,000 signatures. I don't know if that's true (though it might be!). State law requires signatures of 20% of registered voters in the district of the recalled official if the number of registered voters is between 10 and 50 thousand, and 15% if that number is 50 to 100 thousand. (Cal. Elections Code sec. 11221.) I don't know much about the numbers of any particular district, so that's something to look into.

I know there are plenty of you who aren't fans of Supervisor Maxwell, but remember that only D10 residents can sign the recall petition.

-Melissa

Fear of Criminal Prosecution May Hold Up New Sanctuary City Law

2009-11-12T05:26:13-08:00

"To the extent permitted by state and federal law," reads the final nine words of San Francisco’s new sanctuary city ordinance. (pdf. here: Download Campos Sanctuary City.) This phrase, which is now at the heart of the sanctuary city controversy, is simply a statement of what is legally obvious: When local law conflicts with federal law, federal law wins.

Sounds simple enough, right? Sadly, the shadowy shape of federal immigration law makes it hard to know when the line into federal territory has been crossed. Supervisor David Campos has made it clear that he means to push the boundaries of federal law with his newly approved ordinance that will prevent city resources from being used to report undocumented juveniles accused of felonies to immigration officials.

In the course of speechifying about this issue, Campos and others have compared the fight to protect undocumented juveniles to The City’s fight for same-sex marriage. In both cases, the argument goes, The City dared challenge the law in the name of equality. That comparison only goes so far, though, because when it comes to sanctuary city laws, there is a possibility of criminal liability.

Remember that in May of last year, it came to light that The City had been sending some undocumented juveniles out of the country. The Mayor’s Office scrambled to get a new policy in place and by July 2008, and The City began notifying the feds whenever juveniles were arrested for felonies.

The City’s pre-July 2008 shenanigans, however, have not been forgotten. Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, is investigating whether the former policy constituted a violation of federal law making it a crime to harbor or transport illegal immigrants. (8 U.S.C. sec. 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii)-(iii).) If Russoniello is successful, city officials can be held personally criminally liable and subject to fines and/or imprisonment for up to five years. (8 U.S.C. sec. 1324(a)(1)(B)(ii).) Mind you, there is not a lot of precedent for Russoniello’s case, but just to be safe, The City is paying for several (unnamed) city officials to have their own criminal defense attorneys. (See City Attorney memo Download Sanctuary Memo.)

It is against this backdrop that the new sanctuary city law appears. Law enforcement officials already fearful of criminal prosecution for “harboring” undocumented persons will be loath to withhold any information from federal immigration officials and neither the mayor nor City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to expose employees to such liability.

Thus, Herrera sent a letter to Russoniello on Tuesday asking for assurances that no new criminal charges will be brought against individuals who follow Campos’ law. (.pdf of letter here: Download Russoniello Letter .) Of course, Herrera won’t get any such assurance. The more likely scenario is that the new ordinance will be put on hold until Herrera can ask a judge to take a look at it and decide whether it is “permitted by state and federal law.”

MELsterpiece Theater: Debate Over SEIU Layoffs

2009-11-12T05:19:11-08:00

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the supes debated whether to spend $7 million from The City’s general fund reserve to prevent about 150 layoffs and 400 demotions from the ranks of SEIU Local 1021. (.pdf of ordinance here: Download SEIU Ordinance.)

Here is my dramatic interpretation of the debate (these are NOT quotes - if you want to see or read the original exchange, check it out here):

John Avalos: This was a tough budget year, but the Department of Public Health magically brought in $8.5 million more than we had hoped, plus we’ll be getting several million from the federal government under an improved public health reimbursement law. In light of the money coming in, taking $7 million from the reserve is fair. Also: I think it’s suspicious that these midyear reductions are happening primarily to one union and affect mostly women and people of color.

Chris Daly: The only reason I voted for this stupid budget is because it delayed these staffing reductions until November of this year, giving us time to find money to avoid making the cuts. Lo and behold, we have! The director of the Department of Public Health, Mitch Katz, is the mayor’s best friend — so Katz won’t say it publicly, but behind closed doors he tells me that they cannot afford these reductions. Everybody loves to blab about Healthy San Francisco, but we have to staff it, people.

Sean Elsbernd (After publicly soliciting the info from Ben Rosenfeld and Monique Zmuda from the Controller's Office): Let me share a little something I like to call “The Audacity of Nope.” The $34 million in anticipated money from the federal government is not going to happen this fiscal year. There is not actually $8.5 million sitting around at the DPW waiting to be spent. Because of shortfalls in other departments, overall The City has a teensy surplus of less than $1 million. And even that excess is about to disappear because on Monday we get the controller’s report, which will show that property tax revenue this year is going to be even more paltry than we thought. And you want to take $7 million from the general fund reserve? With a straight face?

NOTE- CASE OF THE MONDAYS: Rosenfeld's information about the Q1 report that will be released on Monday's sounds very, very scary. Back in August, I wrote that the avalanche of assessment requests might exceed the numbers The City had anticipated and sadly, they do. Thus far this fiscal year, tax abatement requests number 4,000 which represent $25 billion dollars in assets. That's up from 300 requests in FY 2007-2008 and 1200 in FY 2008-2009. Downward shifting the value of so many properties and reassessing taxes based on those new lower values will affect us this year, according to Rosenfeld.

David Campos: Numbers schmumbers! This is a policy choice. Ninety-six percent of the affected workers are people of color and 80 percent are women. It is just not fair to single them out for demotions and layoffs.

Daly: If there are budget shortfalls in certain departments, let’s crack down on them. I don’t see why we should take away the $8.5 million that the Department of Public Health worked hard to earn. We should be rewarding the department that brought this in, not slashing their ranks. Y’all are always picking on the DPW — using it like The City’s ATM machine and never cutting the police and fire departments.

Elsbernd: If the SEIU had agreed to the givebacks in the tentative agreement proposed last year, we wouldn’t be here making these cuts.

The ordinance required eight votes. With supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Chu, Elsbernd and Sophie Maxwell voting no, it failed, but was sent back to the Budget and Finance Committee. Layoffs will begin Monday.

QUOTE OF THE MEETING:

“I can think of no greater Elsberndian thing to say here in these chambers.”

— Supervisor Chris Daly, arguing that Supervisor Sean Elsbernd should endorse the practice of rewarding good fiscal behavior by allowing departments that bring in unforeseen revenue to keep that revenue. Elsbernd later expressed his gratitude for the new adjective, but disagreed on the grounds that budget responsibility is citywide.

Dear Mayor Newsom: A Modest Proposal

2009-11-05T08:13:56-08:00

Aloha, Mistermayor!

I have heard from several people close to your campaign that you hate old-school fundraising, preferring instead to tweet, preach and otherwise engender mass crushes in the hopes that checks will be forthcoming. Several of those people have told me that you dropped out of the governor’s race because your detached method wasn’t going to work on a California scale.

Honestly, this may be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard about you.

Who wants to spend all their time giving some potential contributor “the girlfriend experience,” pretending to be amused by their dumb jokes and saying they look dashing in that tie? “Have you been working out?” you have to ask while squeezing their flabby biceps, feigning astonishment and hoping for a large donation.

Bah. I don’t blame you for taking a pass.

The curse is that you seem to have an ego that will prevent you from going gently into that good night when you are termed out as mayor in January 2012. How do you move to another office without having to do the dirty, flirty work of fundraising? And what office would that be?

Being lieutenant governor isn’t worth moving to Sacramento since it basically requires you to be the John Oates to the governor, who gets to be Daryl Hall.

Mistermayor, you’re no John Oates.

If only there were a position that would allow you to maintain your position in The Big Deal Club. Let us imagine the perfect job for you...

Your current and former employees seem to agree that you are a political dork who loves to ruminate on policy possibilities. Indeed, it feels like every day your office issues a news release about a green initiative seemingly conjured up by European political science students. The local politicking required to deal with potholes and crime don’t appear to be of interest to you, so let’s work with that. Your dream job should also reward the fact that, like a new iPhone, you easily provide up to eight hours of talk time.

Mistermayor, I humbly suggest the United States Senate.

I know, I know, you’d never run against our current senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But what if Feinstein decides it’s not a good idea to leave the gubernatorial hopes of the California Democratic Party in the hands of Jerry Brown, a man whose 40 years of political eccentricities will be trotted out in Technicolor by Republicans come next fall? (Granted, Feinstein just got her dream job as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but that’s a renewable two-year appointment ending in January 2011 — right about the time she would be sworn in as governor.)

Feinstein is perhaps the only Democrat who can win a governor’s race, especially if you come through with the young’uns by getting all your Twitter followers on Team Diane. In exchange for the sorority vote, if elected governor, Feinstein could then appoint you to serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in 2013. You wouldn’t even have to fundraise!

So, there’s my idea, free of charge.

However, if you decide to go with this suggestion, it would be great if you would let me be the first to break the news.

(Ahem.)

Did I mention you look dashing in that tie?

-Melissa

Kellogg crackles under pressure from attorney’s ‘prove it’ letter

2009-11-05T08:09:21-08:00

‘Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY” has been played across the front of Cocoa Krispies since May of this year. Apparently, Kellogg’s was banking on large numbers of scared, gullible parents overlooking the fact that the box contains tiny puffs of chocolate and instead thinking their child would be safe from the swine flu thanks to Snap, Crackle and Pop.

Last week, City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued a letter to Kellogg’s and to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking for evidence to substantiate the immunity claim. (Here's a .pdf Download KELLOGG-LETTER.) Indeed, the cereal does claim to have added more vitamins A, C and E, which help boost immunity. However, because every food contains some nutrients (even Skittles, thank goodness), whether or not the additional vitamins would make a real difference in a child’s immunity is not at all clear.

On Wednesday, Kellogg’s announced that it will stop marketing the sugar globs as health food. This is a good thing.

Congratulations are in order for Herrera’s office, but before we go giving him all the credit for this idea allow me to point out that back in September East Bay resident Roy Werbel filed a similar lawsuit in federal court against the Kellogg Co. His allegation? That he was misled into believing that the loops in Froot Loops actually contained fruit. (.pdf of complaint here: Download Froot Loops Complaint.)

Just wait until someone figures out Golden Grahams are not made of gold.

BONUS: SFWeekly has been following the Froot Loop suit here, here, and here.