April 9, 2003

Hall Monitor

Hall Monitor

Where's the cash? Some of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' most progressive members attacked Sup. Gavin Newsom's Care Not Cash program last week as deceptive and fiscally unsound.

"It was popular because its premise is popular: that in the ideal situation it's better to provide services than cash," board president Matt Gonzalez said April 2 at the first board-level hearing on the homeless welfare program. "But even if we took [all of the money allocated for the program] and re-prioritized it, we would not have enough to do all that's being promised."

Care Not Cash campaign literature promised to trade homeless welfare grants for housing, food, mental health services, job training, and other support. But problems keep popping up. For example, the Department of Human Services now plans to consider shelter beds as housing to make the numbers work (see "Shelter Shuffle," 4/2/03).

At the hearing Newsom defended Care Not Cash and took issue with critics who charge that the DHS plan will kick some homeless out of the shelters. "The voters did not vote to displace – nor does Care Not Cash displace – non-CAAP recipients [meaning, homeless people who aren't clients of the County Adult Assistance Program, the city welfare plan]," he said. But he didn't offer specifics on how to make the numbers work.

DHS director Trent Rhorer gave his first public presentation on how he plans to split up the $13.9 million program budget: $2.5 million will be used to cover monthly $59 benefit checks, $7.2 million will be spent to develop about 1,000 city-managed hotel rooms, and about $3 million will be directed to mental and behavioral health. Of the remaining funds, some $100,000 will pay for food, Rhorer said.

To critics, it still doesn't look right. Take the food budget, for example. Rhorer said it's only meant to cover some meals, since many shelters already have meal programs and many welfare clients also qualify for food stamps. Even so, $100,000 would provide just $35 worth of food a person – for the whole year.

Rhorer's solution: he says he's confident the welfare caseload will drop, which means scarce dollars can go farther. He told the board committee he believes that many clients aren't really homeless and that some live in other cities but come here for cash. We asked DHS spokesperson Maureen Davidson for evidence; she didn't respond.

Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who called for the hearing, said it's all the more proof that Newsom's campaign was based on deception. "They put out literature promising medical, mental health [services], job training," he told the Bay Guardian. "That's the sizzle the public was sold. But you come up to the pan and there's no steak. What they're basically saying is they're going to drive people away." (Rachel Brahinsky)

Willie's legacy: Ben Hom's fight to get a seat on the San Francisco Port Commission is about something much bigger than whether the longtime heavyweight in local Chinese American political circles should be allowed another crack at serving on a city commission – 10 years after he first got into ethical quicksand for allegedly using such a position for political gain.

It's about whether Mayor Willie Brown will succeed in determining the future of the city's waterfront – by influencing the vote on important development contracts – well after he's left office at the end of this year.

At least that's what Sup. Aaron Peskin strongly suspects. Peskin believes Brown's decision to ask the Board of Supervisors to reappoint union honcho Michael Hardeman and to vote Hom onto the Port Commission – but not request that the expired terms of commissioners Denise McCarthy and Brian McWilliams be renewed – reveals Brown's intention to control the lineup after he's left City Hall.

Hardeman generally can be counted on to vote to the Brown machine's liking, but McCarthy and McWilliams are mavericks who sometimes go against the mayor's will. For several years McWilliams and McCarthy have been sitting in seats with expired terms. Peskin says that in allowing such a situation, the mayor has not been following the provisions of the City Charter.

"The mayor has thoroughly abused the intent of the charter," Peskin told us. "When a position becomes vacant, you have to reappoint the person holding it or find somebody else.... You don't want to have a situation where you have a month-to-month holdover so you can torture them and make them sacrifice their independence. He's been using this as leverage.''

The Mayor's Office did not return calls for comment. At the board's March 25 meeting, Peskin narrowly succeeded, in a 7-4 vote, in getting his fellow supes to send the Hom and Hardeman nominations back to committee for further discussion – with the idea of raising the charter issue to force Brown to offer a full roster for appointment to the Port Commission.

"These folks are going to be on there for four years. We want to see that there's going to be an ideologically balanced commission," Peskin said. "We're saying, 'Show us the full hand.' "

Peskin had hoped to send Brown's requests for the reappointment of Benny Yee and Leroy King to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency back to committee as well. But he lost that vote 7-4. King and Yee have been under fire for getting too cozy with a developer with big plans for the Hunters Point shipyard. (Savannah Blackwell)

Questioning PG&E: PG&E was faulted by the California Public Utilities Commission for failing to detail its San Francisco energy-efficiency pilot program, providing more ammo for critics of the utility who want the city to control all of the program's funds and projects.

PG&E's $16 million, two-year proposal is a collaborative effort with the San Francisco Department of the Environment. In a March 4 draft opinion, the CPUC set aside $8 million for the program, stating that it wasn't willing to risk more without a detailed budget or energy-savings estimates. But before handing over even $8 million, the commission is demanding more specifics.

A CPUC official close to the case told us that PG&E's proposal was "unusual in its broadness and generality" and was so vague that it was unclear exactly what PG&E and San Francisco were "explicitly proposing to do with the money."

PG&E did not return our calls by press time. Department of the Environment director Jared Blumenthal told us the department has since submitted the requested documents, with PG&E approval, and has asked the commission to add an additional $8 million.

"We want to make sure they commit to it this year," he said. City energy officials and the Board of Supervisors back the request.

The arrangement has been criticized by Women's Energy Matters executive director Barbara George, who insists PG&E has a conflict of interest in managing the program, since energy-efficiency projects "unsell" PG&E's main product: energy (see "Power Games," 1/22/03). She said city control over the funding would also allow more public input on priorities. For example, she is calling for at least half of the allocation to be spent on energy efficiency in Hunters Point, to help shut down the aging power plant in that neighborhood.

City officials say they don't plan to seek more control over the program or its funding. The commission is likely to vote April 17 on how much to allocate for the program.