By Steven T. Jones

BAY GUARDIAN: What do you predict will be the outcome of the gay marriage lawsuits, and how do you think your actions in this area will be perceived in 10 years?

Gavin Newsom: As we said in the beginning, this is a long process, and there are going to be bumps in the road. There are going to be setbacks. But ultimately, we feel, or I feel, that the constitutional question, when the California Supreme Court hears it, will be adjudicated favorably from our perspective. And the reason we feel confident of that is Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and obviously Lawrence v. Texas and the antisodomy decision and dissent from Justice Scalia, where he said it opens up the door to gay marriage, and obviously what happened in Massachusetts in November and what's going on today. So, in terms of the legal process, I would never want to predict the outcome of a pending case, to tip it one way or another. But based on the questioning, the writing's on the wall – the first round. The second round, the third round is the more intriguing, more complex, and more significant. Because frankly, the question that we're trying to advance is always the constitutional question.

BG: So you're assuming gay marriage will eventually be a legal right?

GN: To me it's an inevitability, just as it was inevitable that from 1948 – but it took until 1967 – for interracial marriages to be legal throughout the United States of America. It takes time. And at the time, of course, with interracial marriage, public opinion was overwhelmingly opposed in the 16 states that were still holding out and denying interracial marriages, until the Leaving v. Virginia case. Public opinion will clearly, I think, also trail the inevitability of legal and sanctioned gay marriages in this country, but ultimately the public will come around, as they have on interracial marriage.

BG: How is your action going to look in 10 years? Will you be considered an early civil rights leader?

GN: I don't see it like that. I just see one of many people trying to do ... trying to advance this cause and doing what they're able to do, regardless of what capacity they're serving. The reason I was able to do what we did, was able to feel confident in the decision-making, was because of the great work and contributions of NCLR [the National Center for Lesbian Rights] and the great work and contributions of organizations across this country that have taken real leadership positions and have done some extraordinary things because of what we've done on domestic partnerships and advanced the cause and efforts across this country on civil unions. And so it's all just these small ripples that ultimately will have the desired effect and outcome.

BG: You've made a point of reaching out to Bayview-Hunters Point and other poor communities of color, increased the police presence in Sunnydale, and tried to encourage more crime witnesses to come forward. But many in these communities simply don't trust the police, and that's only been made worse by the Operation Impact crackdown in Bayview and the aggressive statements police officials have made regarding the shooting of Cammerin Boyd and Kamala Harris's decision not to seek the death penalty for David Hill. Why haven't you, as chief executive, publicly expressed displeasure at the tone coming out of the San Francisco Police Department? Or do you not see a problem here?

GN: You know, I appreciate the question, but I don't accept the framework of the question. And we have – I don't look at the problems in Bayview-Hunters Point as being prevented through the criminal justice system – we have invested a tremendous amount of time and money into dealing with the things below the surface, the underlying issues that lead to crime and violence, in order to build trust in the community. I guess it's a backdoor answer to your question. In effort to do that, we've probably spent a lot more time in the last five months than this office has spent in many years connecting with people one on one, in going unfiltered into the community, not through forums, not through staged hearings and rallies, but door to door, meeting people organically, on their terms, on any given day of the week. A consequence of that is we've invested a tremendous amount of resources in dealing with the underlying issues and built a lot of trust in the process. Hardly is that unanimous; we're just beginning to build that trust. In turn, we're building trust as it relates to a new philosophy of policing. We've put 16 beat officers in the big four – Sunnyvale, Alice [formerly Double Rock], Potrero, and of course up in Hunters Point – and part of that process is working with the community, start rekindling that trust with the police department. That is the kind of process that I'll continue to engage in. I have no interest in playing the politics of the past, and that's pointing fingers and condemning people, so that I can sway one group or the other to say that I've got strong allegiance or strong subjectivity that's theirs. I'm trying to balance this, by working with people on a much more substantive way, which is a more quiet, more deliberative way, rather than holding press conferences and making press announcements condemning people. I've got a new command staff, a new police chief. We've got a new attitude.

BG: But haven't the reactions to Operation Impact and the police comments about Harris worked against what you're trying to do?

GN: No. Because Operation Impact – I tell you, you should walk the streets with me. You should come out to Bayview-Hunters Point and truly walk the streets. I would say the overwhelming majority of people I talk to one on one support it. But some in the community, some of the more vocal people opposed it. And what I heard from the process was – and we always said this was a few days, see how it goes, and then step back, analyze the impact of Operation Impact and then try to build a process that we can try to consider how to enforce some standards of policing that can build more trust by having the community participate in designing that, and that's exactly what we're doing right now. Meaning, I hardly think that what happened there was perfect, and I'm not going to suggest as much. The process though now is that we are engaging the community and saying, "What about it didn't you like? What about it did you like?" And we're hearing a lot more "what you did like," is what I'm saying. And that again is because I'm not just reading what someone said in one publication or another newspaper. I'm actually meeting people one on one that are scared to death of being out on the streets in the middle the day, let alone at night, and were satisfied with some enforcement. And of course some thought it was absolutely unfortunate because it was targeting certain communities and certain neighborhoods. Understanding that, we're now working with communities to see if they want to bring back aspects of it or not. We're trying to do it in the right way. Sometimes things work; sometimes they don't.

BG: If you did at some point feel like the messages coming from the SFPD or the Police Officers Association were hurting relations with the community, is there anything that you could do to regulate that?

GN: Every single day, we're trying different things. Some things work; some things don't. Some things people pay attention to; some things people aren't paying any attention to. Operation Impact got a lot of attention, and there are about 30 or 40 other things we're doing that don't get as much attention that are advancing this effort. I think if people want to use that as a wedge issue and then throw the whole thing out, they can do that, but it's hardly the real story. To me, it's one part of this mosaic of efforts, and we're learning from that experience, and we're starting to work in other channels to build trust with the community. And we're working hard to do that, and I've taken it upon myself personally, and I know [Police Chief Heather Fong] takes it very personally. I mean, she hardly got into law enforcement because she wanted to condemn the community or divide herself from the community. Ninety-nine percent of the officers out there are working hard every single day because they give a damn and they care about the communities they serve. But just like with politicians, just like with journalists, there are some bad apples and they kind of taint it for everybody. So we're trying to work with people that have common cause, common efforts on both sides of this equation, and try to build the trust. And so we've got new captains, more folks in the investigations division, we're adding a number of new positions in DNA/ballistics criminologists, to go after these cold cases. We're working diligently with state and federal officials to try to deal with a coordinated effort to deal with the problem, and we're doing it with the community participation in most cases.

BG: What's your view of how the city should handle large protests, such as the antiwar and biotech protests? Isn't it overkill to spend $1 million on police overtime so cops can outnumber protesters?

GN: We just didn't know. And we can't predict. That was the biggest event of the year in terms of concern. I mean, when I got into office, everyone sat me down and said, "Get ready for June." I said, "What's going on in June?" Biotech conference. They said, "Get ready." Biotech folks said, "Hey, wherever we are, we get a lot of protest. Doesn't matter where we are, and we're in San Francisco." And we, appropriately, prepare, always, for the worst. Because if the worst happens, people can hurt themselves. Even the protesters can get hurt because of an inappropriate person doing things to exacerbate a situation. So we prepare for the worst, and we scale back as the events occurred or unfolded. But then you hear people talking about the rally the next day. Do you then put a skeleton crew out there, or do you again assume the worst?

By the way, unlike many who have criticized it, I was down there, witnessing it, and you know, I'll tell you, I was pretty proud of the police department and how they handled it. And again, hardly was every single act precisely perfect, but under the circumstances, in the aggregate, the police did a remarkably good job. And the protesters were remarkably civil, with again some exceptions, who were there purely to break the rules, break the laws, in order to send some statement of their dissatisfaction with probably not only the bio conference, but their own view of the world, broadly, in themselves as people. And so, I think, having been down there for two and a half days, and witnessing firsthand, I think under the circumstances, they did a good job, and I'm very pleased with the way the police responded.

BG: How important was it to you to prevent a shutdown of the conference?

GN: That's important. But you know what I want is, I embrace the notion that people have the right to protest – always have – believe in it very strongly. But people have to be respectful of other people. And there's a certain line that cannot be crossed. And we're remarkably considerate, as we were as I watched for I don't know how many hours as people down there, as people basically shut down the intersection as they chained themselves up, and the police stood there and calmly and rationally negotiated. We're very considerate, but you know, there's a fine line. When people come out there with wrenches and they're trying to unleash the water from fire hydrants, hey, now they're starting to break the line. When people are throwing things. You know, someone threw a hypodermic needle at one of the participants. That's breaking the line; that's crossing over. When people are throwing, trying to vandalize personal property, that's crossing the line. When people try to antagonize people by threatening them, that's beginning to cross the line, though verbal threat assaults are hardly offensive in most cases. Again, it's a balancing act, it's nuanced. There's hardly black and white; there are a lot of gray areas.

BG: So you're pretty content with how the police were handling the protesters?

GN: By and large. Easily, you can parse that response. You can look back and say, "Well, all these arrests, were they a trivial waste of time, etc." You can always argue that, but in most cases, I'm very satisfied.

BG: But like with the mass arrest on Market Street, isn't it sometimes better to let even an illegal march just proceed down Market and pass by in 10 minutes rather than making arrests?

GN: Well, they do that. That's the standard operating procedure. Literally, we are facilitating sometimes those marches, which are quote unquote you know, we could easily justify [stopping] under the law. We could say you're jaywalking, could say easily you're obstructing traffic, so we do facilitate to a point. And so, I think San Francisco ... it's ironic because you have cities across this country coming into S.F. to model some of the policing efforts around the protest, because this city has a history of dissent and protest. I mean, there's no guns being fired, no rubber bullets. There's no tear gas. This wasn't Seattle. You know, it's remarkable, it's the old adage – I mean, it's not baseball, and you don't get credit for saves. So a lot of the things we're doing that are not the big headlines because we're doing them but no one really sees it when they go well, it's, "Well, you're doing your job," and we are. And we do it because we have skilled people, highly trained people that have done by and large good work. But again, hardly perfect. By the way, every time we have one of these events, we come together and we download and say, "How can we make it better? How can we improve upon it? How can we work more collaboratively and coordinate our efforts better?" By the way, if you saw all the e-mails I get on an hourly basis, with the chief saying, "Well, I've got too many officers. I'm going to pull back 20 officers." So it's constantly changing and evolving. And we'll reflect on this conference, probably in a week, as we did with the war protest.

BG: That relates to your new budget. The police department got a fairly substantial increase in its budget. The fire department got a relatively small cut, even though a lot of people have identified tens of millions of dollars in fat that should be trimmed. How do you justify protecting these sacred cows when you're making cuts to health care?

GN: [To chief of staff Steve Kava] What were the cuts to the fire department?

Steve Kava: 21.5 [million dollars].

GN: These cuts were hardly insignificant.

BG: It was just over 1 percent of the budget.

GN: Oh no, it was substantially more than that. I think it's 21.5 or 21.7 [million dollars], in addition to the cuts in the last two fiscal years. We can get the exact figures for you.

[Editor's note: The mayor's budget (page 151) calls for cuts of $2.66 million from last year – or a 1.23 percent cut – and even that includes proceeds from surplus property sales of $3.65 million, essentially creating a slight budget increase. Yet in a follow-up interview with budget director Ben Rosenfield, we learned the mayor is counting as "cuts" the costs that might have been incurred if the duties of all the approximately 100 firefighters expected to retire this year were covered by paying overtime to existing firefighters. The mayor's budget caps overtime costs for the first time. Rosenfield also argues that the budget's "general fund support" reduction of $6.5 million – a cut of about 5 percent – and the elimination of 94 positions are more accurate gauges than the overall budget reduction.]

GN: When I looked at it, there were no sacred cows. We're looking at brownouts [in which engines are taken out of service for the day]. We're looking at a lot of things that were recommended in the reports, in the controller's reports. Yet we're not going to close fire stations, but we've made substantial changes, and we are continuing to make substantial changes in the way we're doing business over there. And I can go into detail with what those cuts were. They were substantial.

BG: The Department of Human Services has started requiring welfare-to-work recipients to work seven hours a week for free because their budget doesn't allow those employees to be paid the $8.50 minimum wage without doing so. What are you going to do about what appears to be an illegal and exploitive practice?

GN: Obviously, if we're doing anything illegal and exploitive, we will resolve to do what's right. I imagine that whatever they're changing in terms of the way they're doing things over there, they're considering the law, the letter and spirit of the law, but let me say this, myth versus reality, people receiving cash, the overwhelming majority have no work requirement whatsoever, and we have the most generous work requirement in the United States of America – and I'm sure there may be an exception or two, but to my knowledge – of any big city. In fact, it wasn't but a few months ago that the report that I received showed that less than 10 percent of people on county general assistance had any work requirement whatsoever – less than 10 percent of the entire caseload had any work requirement whatsoever. Now, I'm not denying that 100 percent of those 90 percent may have had disabilities, though I would find that [unlikely]. That being said, we're very considerate. Particularly through our PAYS program, we do alternatives to work so people aren't doing side-by-side work with laborers, at Muni yards, cleaning buses. In fact, last time I saw the numbers, only 325 people were doing "city work" side by side with folks, and that's a 90-day work requirement, and then you can go on work-equivalent programs in perpetuity. And it's a few hours a week over a 90-day period, and then in perpetuity you go on an equivalent-work program though PAYS, etc. So, you know, any changes, obviously, need to be done appropriately.

BG: I recognize that you haven't seen our story yet, which comes out tomorrow.

GN: Yeah, I don't know the details, but we'll take a look at it. But again, the idea is to help people to self-sufficiency. Work matters. We should incentivize work by helping people turn their lives around. The whole idea of county dollar assistance is a temporary assistance program to help people turn their lives around. And we have a truly model program – the PAYS program – and what the PAYS program does is that it recognizes that, yes, we are doing a small amount of work under the circumstances, for an amount of money, $410 a month. And the idea is to get you through that process in an efficient manner, to get you into work-equivalent programs that can truly start dealing with the underlying issues, so they get you off the streets and get you to the next stage of that ladder, moving you toward self-sufficiency. And the way we've advanced that as well is by making sure that we are in the process, as you know, expanding housing opportunities for people. And folks on PAYS have traditionally been the disproportionate beneficiaries of housing under our existing master-lease programs and direct access to housing, but clearly now, under our conversion, Care Not Cash is expanding over 1,200 housing units.

BG: Evidence from around the country shows the privatizing of jail health services reduces levels of care, exposes cities to legal liability, and increases long-term health costs. Have you studied the experiences of places like Philadelphia and Palm Beach, and how do you intend to avoid their outcomes?

GN: I'm not advocating privatization. Never have. I'm advocating change. If anyone in good conscience – I mean, I appreciate the examples. I'm only interested in one thing: evidence and results. I'm not ideological about this. But one thing I am, is concerned that we're spending $17,000 [per inmate per year] for jail health care, when there's 130,000 San Franciscans that haven't broken the law that have no health care. What I am concerned about is that we're spending $17,000 when Alameda County is spending just $3,900 a year. What I am concerned about is L.A. County, which has a not-completely-dissimilar jail population in terms of culturally competent services provided, holistic competent services provided to a very unique population: HIV and AIDS, Hep C, issues of mental health, substance abuse, etc. That population down there is served with just $7,000.

BG: We have longer jail stints here, which accounts for some of that.

GN: It accounts for some of that. But what I don't understand about that argument is that it's an annual cost. So for however long you're in, you're in, but an annual cost per person is $17,000.

BG: I believe that's the cost when it's annualized out, and it's based on short-term care.

GN: We may have a difference of opinion on this in terms of analysis, but here's the bottom line, back to your fundamental question: I don't want to spend this kind of money when you have people that have no access to health care, people being emancipated from foster youth programs in record numbers, 19-year-olds, of which 55 percent of San Franciscans are uninsured, 19- to 24-year-olds, of which 44 percent of San Franciscans are uninsured. And I'd rather start being competitive and changing some of the staffing and the way we do business in order to find efficiencies. And I hope, as other counties have experienced, that through the competitive process, that we can keep it in-house, because we're the largest nonprofit in this city, and we should be able to compete with the smaller nonprofits that usually would run these kinds of programs, and certainly we should be able to compete with the for-profit sector, because there's no profit motivation and so the idea is to create a competitive environment to get the cost down to provide high-quality services, yes, but to use the saving and link it to expanding universal health care for 0- to 24-year-olds and be a model for the United States of America. And that's what this whole thing's about.

BG: But how do you ensure we don't decrease the level of care on a population that's the greatest threat to public health?

GN: That's the old thing, you know. I don't imagine that the Wright Brothers could have explained to you the magnificence of flight when the evidence was overwhelming: What happens if it doesn't work? What happens if you crash. What if this, what if that? I mean, if the notion of change is that we can never imagine doing more with less, never imagine doing better, then there's no progress. I guess my point is, yeah sure, if things start turning down that path, we make adjustments. I said it with Care Not Cash: hey, if I'm wrong, I'll make adjustments. If people don't like things with this budget, in the middle of the year it looks like some of the criticisms are going to occur, we'll make adjustments. I'd like to explore this, without the presumption of failure. It's sort of typical – anytime you try to change something people say it can't be done, here's why that can't be done. As opposed to, let's explore what didn't work in Philadelphia, in Palm Beach, what were their mistakes, how can we learn from them, and how it is working in other cities, and in a positive way, and try to find some balance based on our unique population, which I get. San Francisco is always unique. Only in San Francisco. The idea is to adjust it and see how we can do things. I'm telling you, I don't know of an organization, a person, a business in life that can't find efficiencies. And I'm looking to find efficiencies here, because it is blatantly inefficient based on any objective best-practice analysis, and I'd like to take a look at it. And again, I'm hardly advocating for privatization, but I'm advocating for change and some form of competition that would elevate the expectation of change. Without competition, it's hard to get things moving.

BG: You've promised publicly many times not to make cuts to homeless services. Yet the health cuts you're proposing will clearly affect the homeless. Cutting Tom Waddell Health Center's urgent care, in particular, where half of the clients are homeless, is bound to have a negative impact. How do you reconcile your promise with this fact?

GN: What are we doing at Tom Waddell? Because some people have said what we're doing, and I'm curious about what you guys think we're doing.

BG: Cuts that are going to result in about half as many patient visits, I believe.

GN: There's a lot of myth versus reality. There's a very organized effort to discredit some of our efforts. We, as you know, made some adjustments a week ago because something did float through the cracks that we did not anticipate: the satellite visits and things directly to the homeless in the shelters, etc. That is being maintained, and that adjustment is being made because it slipped through the cracks. First of all, no direct service cuts right to substance-abuse or alcohol treatment. No direct service cuts right to mental health treatment. Again, we're talking in the margins, modest, state cuts, federal cuts, San Francisco's General Fund contributions remain the same. There are modest changes in the context of the corpus of the $1 billion budget, 6,000-plus employees. There are some modest adjustments and changes. And I understand the nature of change: people fear it. The disadvantage for one clinic may be a huge advantage for another, as we start changing the staffing levels. So in Chinatown, they're advantaged, or they're advantaged in this clinic versus that clinic. That's what we're trying to offer here in terms of debate and dialogue. If we just see it as all right, this clinic, the Mission clinic, Tom Waddell around the corner here, is exclusively being cut, then yeah, it sounds like the whole thing's unraveling, but you've got to look at it in the context of our 10 other community clinics and how we're changing the staffing levels to be more consistent and create some equivalency that actually can create broader care and better care. Again, I think it's a good debate to have. At the moment, it's the whole nature of the process. That's why there's a board. I was a member, I get it. And I'll keep a good eye on it, and if I'm convinced that it's a bad idea, then I'll make a technical adjustment in this budget, as I was convinced on the satellite visits, which I did not intend to put in my June 1 budget. So, you know, I think it's pretty remarkable, though, and with only $1.18 billion discretionary budget where we had to find net $307 million in real cuts, that we're really just talking about some minor staffing changes in one clinic. You're going to have plenty of headlines, because as the details come out, there are a lot of these little details – there are hundreds of them. But they're all, in the relative context, small compared to the big things we could have done to truly unravel this system, which I never wanted.

BG: We were pleased to see you proposing to beef up Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng's ability to fight property-assessment appeals.

GN: Good.

BG: Between that and the business taxes you're proposing, how much of a financial role do you see downtown playing in getting the city back on sound fiscal footing?

GN: We're working with downtown today. We're announcing Safeway, SBC, Mervyn's, and others are all stepping up on some summer jobs. I think that we're all in this together, and labor did a tremendous amount to help us balance this budget, and they should be commended. It's extraordinary for labor to do that. And the business community is going to be stepping up, access to $50-plus million in new taxes, and that's significant, and downtown will pay a little more than a majority.

BG: How much will these things help with the city's fiscal health?

GN: If the budget estimated, if the vast majority of this budget – and there would be plenty of adjustments, and that's the nature of these things – but broadly speaking, if it's approved, we'll deal with 85 percent of our structural budget deficit, which is estimated by the controller and the budget analyst to be a $1.029 billion, three-year deficit. Eighty-five percent of that will be fixed this fiscal year in terms of annualizing these changes, and so, from my perspective, if we get what we need in terms of the taxes, if we get the efficiencies, consolidate departments, and argue for changes and maybe a little competitiveness to change the way we do business in jail health, with the laundry and these things, then I think we're well on our way to fiscal solvency and prudence, and I think we're then back on firm economic footing and get more jobs.

BG: So we're not cutting more every year.

GN: And that's the whole point, and that's what we need, to make the fundamental structural changes. Or we just come back next year, and I can delay another year and be back again. We don't want to do that. But we've got to get jobs back in this city. I am a big believer in creating jobs, and I am selfishly, because every job generates $1,700 in revenue that we can invest in people and in programs, and we have lost about 65,000 jobs in the last three years. So we've got to be careful, as our rhetoric and our knives are sharpened, to sort of play this us versus them, downtown fat cats versus the neighborhoods. We need to be reminded that a lot of us are taking the bus from the neighborhoods downtown to go to work. And we got a paycheck, and we are using those dollars to buy goods and services. The days of seeing the big fat cats with cigars, or the big guys with skyscrapers behind them, and the rest of us just great honorable people – I hope we are moving away from that. It is not Enron city. This is not a city of Global Crossing. This is a city where you got some people, whether you like them or not, in the business community that are pretty remarkable. Great Democrats – I know a lot of people don't like the Democratic Party because they are not good enough – but you got a lot of good people that are trying to do the right thing. I imagine the Bay Guardian is a for-profit business, a big one by the way, it is a big business. It is not a bad thing. Business is not bad. Business needs to be a part of this process. The business community is going to step up – and trust me, this has not been easy. The last two tax things that went on the ballot were both defeated, and we are working overtime to try and get these guys, and we are holding them, and we are barely holding onto them, let me assure you. I won't tell you which CEO – he was away for the last few weeks. He came back and he is outraged because it is going to hit them, his company and another company, about $4.6 million. Imagine if each year you were hit with about $4.6 million in taxes.

[Editor's note: Due to technical difficulties with the recording equipment, the last 10 minutes of the interview could not be transcribed in full. But the mayor said he hasn't reviewed the latest amendments to the Sunshine Ordinance; that he has begun to work more closely with the Planning Commission in finding a new planning director ("Why would I squander the opportunity to be inclusive, when it is so easy to be inclusive?"); that he still supports the concept of public power and will do "whatever is in the best interest of the ratepayers and whatever is in the best interest of this city"; and that he has confidence that Susan Leal (whom he named to head the Public Utilities Commission, and with whom he is still negotiating a compensation package and looking for someone to replace her as city treasurer) will help restore public faith in the PUC's commitment to environment justice.]