Daly's coup

IN 1994 THE Democrats narrowly lost control of the state assembly for the first time in more than 30 years – and Willie Brown, one of the most powerful politicians in the state, risked losing his job as speaker. So he pulled what by even his standards was a legendary coup: He got one Republican assemblymember, Richard Mountjoy, booted from the 80-member body on the grounds that he had just been elected to a vacant seat in the state senate. That left 40 Republicans and 39 Democrats. Then Brown somehow convinced one GOP member, Paul Horcher, to support his candidacy, giving Brown 40 votes.

Still, that wasn't enough – the normal assembly rules, which Brown had enforced in the past, still required 41 votes for a majority, even when a seat was vacant. As Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee's political columnist, remembers, on the day of the vote, the assembly clerk, who would normally make a parliamentary ruling on that issue, mysteriously called in sick, leaving Brown to make the crucial ruling himself. He decreed that 40 votes were adequate for a majority rule – and got himself reelected speaker.

(Horcher was later recalled from office over the vote – and Brown brought him to San Francisco, where he has a plum city hall job.)

That's how Brown has always conducted business – in the back room, with sleazy deals, bending and breaking the rules at will to preserve his personal power and promote the interests of his big campaign contributors and political cronies.

So when Brown starts whining about the unexpected move by Sup. Chris Daly to use his one-day post as acting mayor to appoint two apparently eminently qualified people to the hack-ridden San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, we have no sympathy.

Sure, there are what the left-liberals like to call "process issues" here. Sure, in an ideal world, Daly wouldn't usurp the mayor's prerogative and fill two vacant posts while holding what is normally a ceremonial position.

But let's be serious here: What exactly did Daly do wrong? He shone some much needed light on the fact that Brown has consistently filled one of the city's most powerful and important commissions with worthless political toadies who have absolutely no qualifications for the position (except their willingness to do Brown's bidding). And he put two people on the panel who will, by all indications, do a far better job.

It doesn't take much examination to see why Daly – and many others, including us – got so frustrated with Brown's SFPUC appointments. The agency oversees the city's Hetch Hetchy water system – perhaps the single most critical piece of public infrastructure in northern California. It will supervise a $4 billion project to rebuild that system. And, equally important, the SFPUC is the central policy nexus for the city's ongoing violation of the federal Raker Act and the failure to bring San Francisco a public power system that would bring, according to a recent study by consulting firm R.W. Beck, more than $200 million a year into public coffers.

For decades, the SFPUC has blocked every attempt to move the public power agenda forward. The commissioners have refused to do a credible feasibility study on the costs and benefits of taking over Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s local system. They've sided with the private utility on every single issue. By doing so, they've put the entire Hetch Hetchy system at risk (Republicans in Congress have even threatened to use the city's violation of the Raker Act as grounds to take back control of the O'Shaugnessy Dam, the linchpin of the entire water system).

In the meantime, the current SFPUC has tried mightily to hand the entire renovation project – and potentially, the entire water system – over to the Bechtel Corp., which is notorious for mismanaging public works projects and privatizing water systems.

So activists and labor groups have been forced to go around the SFPUC, to create a Local Agency Formation Commission (which sponsored the R.W. Beck study), to take measures directly to the ballot, and to get the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to cut funding for Bechtel's SFPUC contract. It's ridiculous: there's a city agency that so fundamentally can't be trusted to do its job that every responsible party has to waste huge amounts of time and energy creating other systems to get the work done.

Then two weeks ago, as Matthew Hirsch reports on page 13, Andrew Lee, son of power broker and Brown ally Julie Lee, came to see Daly, saying Brown was considering him for a spot on the SFPUC. After asking a few questions, Daly realized Lee knew nothing about the agency and had no qualifications for the position but would probably get it anyway, for purely political reasons. So, angry and unable to stand for it, Daly took matters into his own hands and filled two vacant slots while Brown was out of town.

In the process he demonstrated with unusual clarity that there are, indeed, qualified people available for these commission jobs. Adam Werbach is an environmentalist prodigy, handpicked by the late David Brower to serve as national president of the Sierra Club at 23. Robin Chiang is an architect with expertise in environmentally sensitive construction.

The new commissioners have plenty of work ahead of them and need to quickly demonstrate not only environmental but also public interest credentials. The first step: They should both make clear that they support public power and are prepared to use the SFPUC to promote the public power agenda. They should also state publicly that they oppose any form of water privatization and won't allow Bechtel any sort of significant role in the Hetch Hetchy revamp.

Mayor Brown is already talking about a City Charter change that would limit the powers of an acting mayor. But that's the wrong message to take away from this incident. What the next mayor needs to understand is that the public is sick and tired of seeing key city commissions, supervising essential services and programs worth billions of dollars, treated as little more than political farm teams and sinecures for campaign donors and cronies.

P.S. In a dramatic move on the public power front, R.W. Beck has sent a letter to PG&E asking for a long list of important information about the operations and finances of the private utility's local system. The information Beck requested could reveal, for the first time, exactly how much profit PG&E makes off San Francisco. The authority for the request came from LAFCo chair Matt Gonzalez, who, after PG&E objected to the conclusions of a Beck feasibility study (see "Report Pushes Public Power," 10/8/03), directed Beck to demand real answers from PG&E. Already, the private utility is trying to duck and obfuscate. But LAFCo should hold firm: If PG&E won't provide the data, the panel should ask the Board of Supervisors to subpoena it. And at the very least, Gonzalez should inform PG&E lobbyists at the next LAFCo meeting that until they're willing to come clean, they have no right to challenge Beck's conclusions.