SO THE SAN Francisco supervisors bowed to the City Attorney's Office once again and approved another really bad contract. This time it was a 20-year deal with Clear Channel Communications, a nasty media conglomerate that owns 1,200 radio stations, half of the billboards in San Francisco, the old Bill Graham Presents concert-promotion business, and lots of other stuff. These guys are known for monopolistic practices and censorship – locally, Clear Channel's KMEL-FM fired David "Davey D" Cook after he failed to sufficiently toe the pro-Bush patriotic line post-Sept. 11.

And now Clear Channel will get control over newspaper distribution in the city.

Tali Woodward has been covering this story for us, and her latest dispatch is on page 12. As she points out, Sup. Matt Gonzalez, with the support of Sups. Chris Daly and Gerardo Sandoval, tried to delay the final approval. But the other eight supervisors did what too many previous boards have done: they took the city attorney's advice without posing serious questions or challenges.

The city attorney argued (for a lot of complicated legal reasons I think are crap) that Clear Channel might sue and the city might be on the hook for a lot of money if the board didn't sign off on every single aspect of a big, complex deal. After all, the City Attorney's Office negotiated the deal; the lawyers didn't want to change a single word. Lawyers never do.

But the supervisors aren't supposed to blindly follow their lawyer's advice. That's what got us into the really horrible Hetch Hetchy contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Turlock and Modesto, which are now costing us a fortune. That's how we got into the really bad cable-TV franchise (which Daly is trying to get us out of – and once again, I guarantee the City Attorney's Office will balk). It's how we got the bad business-tax settlement.

The supervisors make policy; they have oversight. This was, and is, a bad deal. Clear Channel wants this contract; if the supervisors had told the city attorney to go back and negotiate a better deal, I think the city would have gotten a better deal. Instead we have a mess, and I think the supervisors who went along with it will regret that decision for years.