By Tali Woodward and Julian Foley

Questions about the Independent's circulation took center stage June 12 at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Finance Committee meeting. Since voters passed Proposition J in 1996, setting new standards for the city's advertising, the paper has been virtually guaranteed the contract to print public notices. This contract expires at the end of June, and union representatives are pressing the city not to renew it. Their efforts to get union contracts into place at the Independent and the San Francisco Examiner, both owned by the Fang family, have long been thwarted.

Grant Corley, a pre-press worker for the Ex, told committee members that if the contract is renewed, "taxpayers will be subsidizing blatant union busting." He also said the Examiner is doing its best to inflate its circulation numbers – even offering employees 10-week subscriptions for one penny.

Sups. Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, and Tom Ammiano seemed unsurprised by complaints of dumped papers and uneven distribution on some of the three days the Independent is published each week. "I've never gotten a Thursday Independent in the 14 years I've lived here," said Peskin, who later asked to hear from a representative of the paper. When no one came forward, Ammiano quipped, "Did the Independent read its own notice that there was a meeting today?" Peskin responded that if the notice had been printed in the Saturday edition of the paper, which is notoriously hard to find, it would be unlikely anyone had seen it. At his suggestion, the committee delayed consideration of the contract to an as-yet-unscheduled special meeting.

Florence Fang, the papers' publisher, did not respond to calls by press time.