Hall Monitor
Labor pains: In the latest episode in the Day Labor
Program contract saga, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services
announced April 28 that it would reopen the bidding process once again
– for the third time in less than a year – following allegations
of impropriety in the way the contract-selection process was carried
out.
As the Bay Guardian reported April 9 ("La lucha sigue"),
a selection panel handpicked by the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services
voted to grant the $100,000 contract to Volunteers of America Bay
Area, an Oakland-based agency that critics say collaborates with
police to keep day laborers off the streets. Insiders charged the Mayor's
Office with skewing the selection process against La Raza Centro
Legal, which got on Mayor Willie Brown's bad side when it began
organizing against police crackdowns on day laborers.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Tom Ammiano was
concerned enough about allegations of wrongdoing to ask the Budget Analyst's
Office to investigate how the latest selection process was carried out.
And La Raza Centro Legal filed suit, charging the city with retaliating
against it for political organizing, thereby infringing on its First
Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Ron Vinson, director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services,
acknowledged that his office plans to rewrite the associated request
for proposals, but would give no further details until he'd had a chance
to meet with the city attorney. "Due to pending legal action, we've
been instructed not to respond to any questions about the process,"
he said.
But La Raza Centro Legal executive director Anamaría Loya told
the Bay Guardian that Vinson indicated that, this time, the contract-awarding
decision will involve his office in conjunction with the Mayor's Office
of Community Development, the Immigrant Rights Commission, the Human
Rights Commission, and the Office of Contract Compliance.
In the meantime, La Raza Centro Legal has continued to run the program
without city funds. "The initial grant period for the contract
was from last July to this June," Loya said. Just how long it will
take the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services to award those funds
remains to be seen. (Camille T. Taiara)
Cop reform: Judge Kay Tsenin may have thrown out District
Attorney Terence Hallinan's charges against five top cops for
allegedly conspiring to keep the truth from getting out in the notorious
Fajitagate debacle, but Hallinan is convinced the San Francisco Police
Department needs to be reformed. Thus, he's asked the Board of Supervisors
to craft an initiative that would change the composition of the Police
Commission so that all members would no longer be appointed by the
mayor. The idea is to grant to the Board of Supervisors the authority
to make some appointments – just as voters gave the supes the right
to appoint members of the Planning Commission in March 2002.
Sup. Tom Ammiano has made a similar suggestion. (Savannah
Blackwell)
