THE BATTLE OVER bringing Laguna Honda Hospital into compliance with state and federal law – a necessity for receiving funds – began during the tenure of mayor Dianne Feinstein. Every mayor since then paid lip service to the problem, until Willie Brown called together a task force to determine the cost and size of a replacement facility. An aging population and demographic projections led to an estimated need for 1,200 beds.

The cost was not so easy, estimated at $400 million. Our polling showed that public awareness was not sufficient to pass such a large general-obligation bond. So the Laguna Honda First Committee was started. Hospital workers union leader Sal Rosselli, Residential Builders Association leader Joe O'Donoghue, Independent publisher Ted Fang, columnist Warren Hinckle, and I decided to ask voters to take a pledge not to support any new general-obligation bonds until Laguna Honda's needs were addressed.

We developed some TV ads showing pictures of patients in crowded conditions while the Simon and Garfunkle song "Old Friends" played in the background, and we sent out 60,000 brochures asking people to take the pledge.

Our first victim was the $60 million general-obligation bond measure for the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. We used the tagline "Old people before old art." The bond was defeated, and the political family of elected officials got the message that Laguna Honda had moved to the top of the political agenda.

At that point, city attorney Louise Renne moved in and reduced the proposed cost by committing $100 million in revenue due to the city as its share of the national tobacco lawsuit settlement. Some design modifications were made, and a campaign managed by Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter won 73 percent of the vote for a 1,200-bed replacement facility.

Architect Tony Irons – a good fellow who handled the redo of City Hall – was sent to Laguna Honda, and not one peep of negative information was given to the public to suggest that the goals of this bond measure were in trouble.

What was heard loudly and clearly from advocates, doctors, nurses, volunteers, and others was that Dr. Mitch Katz had stopped admitting the elderly and was using Laguna Honda as a psych ward, shipping patients with mental health problems from S.F. General Hospital to Laguna Honda, where weekly/daily violent incidents were occurring against the frailest San Franciscans. Doctors, nurses, and volunteers spoke out unanimously against this outrageous practice. Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered it stopped.

But why did he allow it to begin? The members of the Laguna Honda First Committee have been talking among themselves and will renew the call to hold hostage all future bond measures until the 1,200-bed replacement facility, approved by 73 percent of the electorate, is realized. We know Newsom was the sole vote against that measure on the Board of Supervisors, and now he says, "I told you so." That's just cover-your-ass double-talk. As mayor, his job is to carry out the will of the voters, and if he won't, the voters will find someone who can. Jack Davis is a political consultant whose past clients have included Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom.