December 11, 2002

Hall Monitor

Dufty and the fuzz: It seems Bevan Dufty has quite a few friends behind the blue wall. Of the more than $53,000 the candidate for District Eight supervisor reported raising in the Nov. 5 election, at least $2,700 came from San Francisco Police Department officers, including assistant chief Alex Fagan. For the Dec. 10 runoff, in which he'll face Eileen Hansen, he's thus far taken an additional $400 from Police Department employees.

Fagan's son, who is also named Alex, and two other off-duty officers are under investigation for allegedly beating two men in front of a Union Street bar.

As for Fagan Sr., he was suspended after he pushed and shoved officers who had pulled over the car in which he was a passenger in 1990, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. And in 2000 the San Francisco Police Commission suspended him without pay for one month after he left the scene of a car accident.

Two members of the Police Commission, Victor Makras and Wayne Friday, have also given Dufty money. And the San Francisco Police Officers' Association sent a soft-money mailer to District Eight voters advising them that if they care about public safety, they should vote for Dufty.

Hansen, on the other hand, has the support of Mary Dunlap, the top official at the agency that acts as police watchdog, the Office of Citizen Complaints.

"We need independent supervisors willing to take a hard look at alleged abuse by rookie SFPD officers of citizens on our streets,'' said Jerry Threet, a former president of the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club and a Green Party member. "With campaign contributions from 31 SFPD officers ... I doubt Dufty's ability to be independent in these matters. And wouldn't Mayor Brown, who went out of his way to back the police before investigations even began, pressure Dufty to look the other way?"

Dufty did not return calls seeking comment. (Savannah Blackwell)

HRC cleared: You wouldn't know it from reading the San Francisco Examiner, but the Housing Rights Committee has been officially cleared of charges that it used public money for campaign purposes.

Last summer Examiner columnist Frank Gallagher accused the nonprofit, which helps tenants avoid eviction through counseling and education, of using money from the Mayor's Office of Community Development to campaign against a 2000 proposition (Proposition H) aimed at stopping landlords from passing on the cost of capital improvements to tenants. Gallagher also maintained that the HRC used public funds to lobby against the proposal to lift the city's annual limit on the conversion of rental units into condos (Proposition R), which failed at the Nov. 5 ballot.

On Nov. 4 the auditing division of the City Controller's Office released a report concluding nonpublic funds were used. It did find that director Rebecca Logue-Bovee had accidentally deposited a $250 check from Ethics Commissioner Paul Melbostad that was meant for the nonprofit's use into an account for Prop. H. Logue-Bovee has admitted it was a bookkeeping error.

Gallagher's allegations led Mayor Willie Brown to place an initiative on the November ballot stipulating that nonprofits receiving city funds cannot use that money for campaign purposes. Since that's already illegal, the measure was redundant, though voters approved it. (Blackwell)

Walgreens a go-go: Looks like the November arrest of former Planning Commissioner president Hector Chinchilla hasn't meant the end of a plan to transform the former Apollo Theater site into a Walgreens.

At the Nov. 25 San Francisco Board of Supervisors' meeting, the proposal, which also calls for the construction of eight housing units, was approved 9-0, with Sup. Aaron Peskin recused and Sup. Tony Hall absent.