WHEN MAYOR GAVIN Newsom took office in the middle of a horrible budget crisis, he made at least a symbolic effort to make the cuts he proposed look fair. He asked all the city employees who made more than $150,000 a year – including himself – to take a pay cut. (The mayor gave back $25,000 of his $168,000 paycheck.)

As it turned out, not many of the top earners followed the mayor's lead, and as a budget matter, the whole thing turned out to be pretty much a bust. And I think everyone realized at the time that it was mostly a public relations stunt. But at least Newsom tried – and he could tell lower-paid employees that they weren't the only ones shouldering all the burdens of lean times.

So it's pretty annoying that school superintendent Arlene Ackerman is fighting so hard to defend her juicy pay raise (and amazingly juicy severance plan) at a time when the nonteaching staff represented by SEIU Local 790 haven't received a raise in three years (see Opinion, page 11). I know the chief of the troubled SF schools should be paid well, and I don't object to paying senior public employees well. And I know that, on a rational level, in the context of a huge budget problem, Ackerman's personal pay raise is so small it barely shows up on the spreadsheets. But on a political level, it looks terrible.

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On to happier news. Music editor Kimberly Chun is excited about this week's cover package, on how local producers are leading the Bay Area's reemergence at the top of the national hip-hop scene. She notes:

"The current excitement about hip-hop is drifting across the country. And from Federation to the Frontline, most of the recent major signings in the Bay have occurred through local labels, themselves often based around the work of a single producer.

"Contributor Garrett Caples checks in with a few of the major players in and around the Bay, including E-A-Ski, a veteran who's managed to survive four label deals that fell apart, and come out on top: His studio, amid the McMansions in the Oakland hills, is a testament to the producer-artist's ability to 'ski' through wreckage that would send other careers into free fall. Now the Bay is waiting for him to turn his touch to his own solo work."

Tim Redmond