Endorsements

Stop the Schwarzenegger power grab. Yes on 79, no on 78. Sandoval for assessor. Complete recommendations for the Nov. 8 election

THE GOVERNOR'S NAME isn't on the Nov. 8 ballot, but it might as well be: The statewide special election is all about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The man who said he was going to reform California government in the name of the people, and kick the special interests out of Sacramento, has done nothing of the sort. In fact, it's hard to think of anything he's done that looks remotely like a "reform." All he's done is change the definition of "special interest": the big businesses that have donated millions of dollars to his campaigns are fine; it's nurses and teachers who are the problem.

With his political fortunes flagging, and his popularity sinking to a Gray Davis-type low, Schwarzenegger has called this $70 million election in a desperate effort to pass an agenda he couldn't possibly get through the Democrat-controlled legislature. But his goal isn't really changing state policy – it's changing state politics.

In fact, the underlying plan behind the governor's initiatives is simple: He wants to transform California's political landscape, to give the Republican Party and big corporations a lock on the capitol for the foreseeable future. It's a bold, insidious plan, something out the Karl Rove-Tom DeLay playbook. Together, his ballot measures would open the door to more GOP seats in the state legislature and the US Congress, eliminate the one big source of campaign money that has traditionally supported Democratic candidates and causes, and give the governor unprecedented control over the state budget and spending. It's a power grab of breathtaking scope – and almost nobody in the news media seems to have noticed.

If the governor's initiatives go down, his political career will be, for all practical purposes, over. If he wins, and wins big, he could become the most powerful chief executive the state has seen in many, many years.

Schwarzenegger and his allies are hoping turnout will be low. Without any big-ticket offices at the top of the ballot, many voters won't go to the polls. So the challenge for progressives, independents, and anyone else who fears a complete takeover of state government by the big-business wing of the Republican Party is to get to the polls, and get everyone they know to the polls, and make sure the Schwarzenegger slate is defeated.

On the local front, there's a crucial election for San Francisco assessor – perhaps the second-most-important job in City Hall – and a series of significant ballot measures.

Our recommendations follow.

California

Ballot measures

Proposition 73

Waiting period and parental notification before abortions

NO, NO, NO Seeking an abortion is never easy or pleasant, and Proposition 73 would set up unnecessary – and potentially dangerous – obstacles for California's young women.

This measure would prohibit doctors from performing abortions on minors without notifying a parent or guardian and then require them to wait for a 48-hour "reflection period" to elapse.

These kinds of requirements are hardest on young women in the toughest circumstances. Teens who fear their parents' reaction to a pregnancy may have good reason to be scared, and requiring them to involve their parents could have terrible side effects. It would inevitably lead some teenagers to seek illegal, back-alley abortions. And other teens, who opt to tell their families, might face turmoil or even violence.

More commonly, Prop. 73 would cause pregnant teens to put off making a decision about whether to have an abortion. And though abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, it becomes much more risky as pregnancy progresses.

The exceptions in Prop. 73 are also frighteningly narrow. The "medical emergency" exemption only authorizes a doctor to act if a pregnant teen is facing death or a "serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function."

Backers of this measure say they just want to "protect" teenagers, but their real goal is to undermine safe access to abortion fo r all Californians. Send them a clear message that California won't go for reactionary policies that harm women. Vote no.

Proposition 74

Public school teacher tenure

NO Schwarzenegger says Proposition 74 will improve public schools by making it easier to weed out bad teachers. In reality it would hurt schools by making a career in teaching even less appealing than it is today.

Under the current system, a new teacher can be dismissed at any point during his or her first two years on the job. After that, school districts must demonstrate cause for the firing.

Prop. 74 would extend the probationary period for new teachers from two to five years. Only two other states have trial periods that long.

It would also make it possible for an experienced teacher to be booted at any point, with virtually no explanation for the firing. This would allow principals to fire teachers they don't like – even if it's due to a personality conflict or an issue of academic freedom – and give the teachers almost no recourse to challe nge the firing.

There are a few worrisome anecdotes about school districts having to go to unreasonable lengths to get rid of bad teachers, and the process deserves more scrutiny. But Prop. 74 is not the answer. In fact, there's little reason to believe it's anything more than Schwarzenegger's attempt to penalize teachers who vocally criticized his policies.

Public school teachers are underpaid, get far too little respect, and struggle every day in underfunded schools. It's hard enough to convince smart and committed people to go into teaching, and this would be one more disincentive. Vote no.

Proposition 75

Public employee union dues

NO, NO, NO This is perhaps the most misleading and pernicious of all the governor's ballot games. The way Schwarzenegger describes Proposition 75, it's about helping individual employees protect their paychecks from union leaders who want to divert mandatory dues into political campaigns. Nonsense: The real backers of this measure are hardly worker advocates. They're millionaires and the heads of giant corporations that want to exert complete control over state politics (go to www.millionairesforprop75.com for a list).

Here's the truth: There's only one organized force capable of raising the sort of political money that can be remotely competitive with big business, and that's labor. Unions, with their built-in, large grassroots constituency, can raise and spend the kind of sums that make campaigns competitive. Organized labor put close to $100 million into John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, spent tens of thousands of dollars supporting public power in San Francisco in 2001, and spends millions on state candidates and initiatives. As much as half of that money, maybe more, comes from public employee unions. And the vast majority of it goes to Democrats and progressive causes.

Schwarzenegger and his pals want to turn off that spigot, for good. Prop. 75 would leave big businesses and rich individuals as the only ones who can regularly spend real money on politics – crippling the Democratic Party and leaving the governor's henchmen in total control.

Supporters of Prop. 75 say it's not fair that workers, who are required under contracts to pay union dues, have no direct choice in how that money is spent. Some union members may be Republicans, who don't want their hard-earned cash going to help Democratic politicians. But that's a misleading argument: No mandatory union dues can be spent on campaigns anyway. Only a separate type of paycheck deduction, which workers have to vote to assess themselves, can be used for politics. Union leaders are directly elected, so it's not as if members have no say in the matter. For all the problems with union democracy (and in some cases, there are very real problems), it's a far better process than what goes on with big corporations, where shareholders (the actual owners) have absolutely no say at all in how their money is spent on campaigns. And we don't see the governor demanding that shareholders be asked once a year exactly how much management can donate to political candidates or campaigns.

This is part of a national movement to cut organized labor out of politics. Vote no.

Proposition 76

State-spending and school-funding limits

NO, NO, NO This is one of the most radical state-spending provisions to come along since the Jarvis-Gann antitax measure, Proposition 13, in 1978. In essence, Proposition 76 would eliminate guaranteed school funding and give the governor sweeping new powers to cut any program. It's part of the overall Schwarzenegger power grab, and it could profoundly change the way the state allocates money for everything from police and fire services to social programs.

Essentially, Prop. 76 would allow the governor to declare a "fiscal emergency" in very broadly defined situations – and if the legislature doesn't do what he wants, the governor could unilaterally cut spending, at his sole discretion. He could eliminate programs funded by the legislature, wipe out state funding for a wide range of local programs, break state contracts, cut employee compensation, or in any way reduce or reallocate state money.

At the same time, the measure would reduce the growth in the state budget, repeal the Proposition 98 guarantees for school funding, and mandate that any excess state revenue be spent on construction and debt payment (not, for example, to fund badly needed new programs).

This would cause immediate cuts in education and shift the balance of power in Sacramento in favor of the governor's office. It's a scary thought with Schwarzenegger in charge, but it's a bad idea to give any governor that much power. Vote no.

Proposition 77

Redistricting

NO This measure is simple – but not simple in the way Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies would have you believe. They'd like you to think that handing over the once-a-decade exercise of redrawing legislative and congressional districts to a panel of three retired judges will take the politics out of the process. But the reality is that this is an audacious undemocratic move by a party that California voters have long kept in the minority.

California is a solidly blue state, with Democrats holding an overwhelming majority in both legislative houses. That will probably still be true in 2010, when it's again time to redraw legislative boundaries, a process that now requires the legislature and governor to come to some agreement and calls in the State Supreme Court if there's an impasse.

The importance of the job can't be overstated. Just look at what Rep. Tom DeLay did in Texas: Redrawing congressional boundaries in a partisan way cut several Democrats out of their seats and gave the GOP a larger majority in the House.

What this measure would do is hand that power over to a panel of three retired judges. How do those three get named? That's the insidious part. A pool of volunteers is randomly narrowed down to 24 judges, with the two major parties having equal representation. Then, the two major-party leaders from both the State Senate and State Assembly each pick three people from parties other than their own. Each of the four leaders then eliminates one person from the list, leaving a pool of eight (likely four Democrats and four Republicans), from which three are selected at random.

It's like a game of three-card monte dealt by Karl Rove. Beneath all the fancy sleight of hand lies one simple fact: A state controlled by Democratic voters and their elected representatives could end up with voting districts drawn up by a Republican-controlled panel. And that's what this really is, just one more covert attempt by the Republicans to steal political control they can't win at the ballot box. Don't fall for it.

Proposition 78

Discounts on prescription drugs

NO

Proposition 79

Prescription drug discounts, state-negotiated

YES There are two separate proposit ions on the ballot that promise to offer low-income Californians some relief from skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices. And at first read, they seem similar: Each would set up a program enabling certain people to purchase a discount card entitling them to reduced prices on prescription drugs purchased from their local pharmacy; each program would be open to uninsured people of limited means; and each program would be administered by the government, which would negotiate discounts with pharmacies and drug companies.

But there's a big difference between Proposition 79, the result of a long community-based effort, and Proposition 78, the pharmaceutical companies' dirty little plan to block Prop. 79.

To put it simply, Prop. 79 has a good chance of working, while Prop. 78 is a big ruse.

It all comes down to the government's ability to negotiate discounts on behalf of lower-income Californians. Prop. 79 would give the government some leverage over the pharmaceutical companies because any company that refuses to offer discounts through this new program would have its products taken o ff the list of preapproved drugs offered by Medi-Cal. The accompanying threat to profits would make each pharmaceutical company far more likely to participate in the discount program.

Prop. 78, on the other hand, doesn't contain any mechanism to encourage the companies to discount their wares. Instead, it assumes drug company executives will offer price breaks out of the goodness of their hearts – an assumption that is hard to take seriously.

The Prop. 78 program would only be open to half as many Californians as the Prop. 79 one, but that's basically a moot point, since it would be unlikely to offer much in the way of discounts anyway.

Also, Prop. 79 would make it explicitly illegal for pharmaceutical companies to demand "prices or terms that lead to any unjust and unreasonable price." Prop. 78 contains no such language.

Funded by more than $70 million in campaign cash from Big Pharma so far, the No on 79-Yes on 78 campaign is telling voters that consumer- and union-backed Prop. 79 will reduce access to specific drugs for patients on Medi-Cal. In reality, doctors could prescribe any drug – they would just have to comply with the rules that are currently in place for drugs that aren't preapproved by Medi-Cal.

The ads are confusing, but the bottom line is simple: No on 78, yes on 79.

Proposition 80

Regulation of electric service providers

YES Proposition 80, sponsored by the Utility Reform Network, would repeal the worst parts of electricity deregulation, which paved the way for the California energy crisis and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s $8 billion public bailout.

It would reinstate a legal obligation for PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric – the three big private utilities in California – to operate in the public interest, giving regulators more power to hold the utilities' feet to the fire.

And it would make efficiency a top priority for California's energy needs.

Prop. 80 by itself won't change everything. It would still let private companies control much of the state's energy grid. It would still allow the governor to appoint all five members of the California Public Utilities Commission, which means regulation won't be effective. We'd have much preferred a measure making statewide public power the goal for California.

But this is a positive step, and Mirant Corp. and Duke Energy are pouring money into defeating it. Vote yes.

San Francisco

Assessor-recorder

1. Gerardo Sandoval

2. Phil Ting

3. Ron Chun

This is one of the most important offices in the city, and for decades it's been filled with corrupt or incompetent politicians who have lost such staggering sums of money for the city that it's painful even to think about. The last two elected assessors haven't fared well: Doris Ward left under a cloud, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation swarming all over her office. Mabel Teng unexpectedly resigned, without ever giving a credible explanation, and hasn't been seen much around town since.

It ought to be the perfect job for an experienced tax and finance expert who has no political baggage and a vision for not only recovering millions of dollars in lost revenue but also for helping lead an overhaul of the city's tax structure. It's also a job for a crusader, someone who wakes up every morning thinking about ways to squeeze more money out of downtown and bust tax cheats who are stealing from the city.

None of the candidates this time around fits that bill perfectly; in fact, we have some problems with each of them. But on balance, in this ranked-choice race, our picks are Gerardo Sandoval, Phil Ting, and Ron Chun.

On paper, Chun, a tax lawyer and former Internal Revenue Service agent, is by far the best-qualified candidate. He actually understands, and thrives on, the arcane details of tax assessment law and can quickly pick up on the ways big businesses use loopholes to avoid paying their fair share. He's already shown he has some experience fighting downtown – as a member of the Assessment Appeals Board, he wrote the decision that nailed the owners of One Market Plaza for hiding an ownership change (and thus costing the city millions of dollars). And as an assistant to Ward, he came up with a way to prevent same-sex couples who own homes from getting hit with huge tax hikes after the death of a domestic partner – tax hikes that married couples don't have to pay.

Chun's a bit conservative; he talks more about enforcing the law than soaking the rich. But he's a well-meaning candidate who won our endorsement four years ago (before coming in third behind Ward and Teng). But he's got a couple of problems this time around. For one thing, hardly anyone believes he actually lives in San Francisco. He recently moved his family to Palo Alto, and although he keeps an apartment in the city, and insists that he lives there, it's a hard story to buy. He's also been too, well, mysterious about his plans: He told us he has a well-crafted plan to raise millions more in revenue, but he wouldn't tell us what it was. And he hasn't built the political constituency he needs to be a serious contender.

Ting, the incumbent, took over the job when Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him to replace Teng. He's a former Arthur Anderson real estate consultant who has some experience in appraising commercial property. More recently, he's been running the Asian Law Caucus, a venerable nonprofit civil rights group. He's already done some very positive things: He went after the billboard companies, particularly Clear Channel, over a depreciation gimmick that was costing the city $2 million a year. He's fought Sutter Health, the profit-minded owner of California Pacific Medical Center, over its nonprofit status. And he's trying to clear up a horrible backlog of assessments and appeals that are a huge drain on city finances. He's an experienced manager with generally progressive sentiments. The city could do (and already has done) much worse.

But Ting hasn't convinced us he's a crusader – or that he's tough enough to stand up to downtown. In 2001 he ran for the Municipal Utility District board and was a huge supporter of public power. A year later, when another public power measure was on the ballot, he told the campaign manager, Ross Mirkarimi, that he couldn't allow his name to be included on the list of supporters. What changed? Well, he'd taken a job at the Asian Law Caucus – and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. donates money to the organization. (Ting told us it had nothing to do with PG&E; he just thought it was a bad idea to let his name be used in any political campaign. Given PG&E's aggressive role in funding nonprofits and pushing them to oppose public power, we find th at hard to believe.)

His public power switch doesn't give us a lot of hope for his ability to be tough under fire. We're also worried about his failure to grasp even basic facts about the job. When we asked him whether the Assessor's Office could have been more aggressive fighting the owners of the Bank of America building over a gigantic assessment appeal, he didn't seem to realize that there are a number of ways to appraise a landmark building like that one, and that the city had options it willfully ignored.

Ting's a clear improvement over past occupants of the office – but at a time of looming structural budget deficits approaching $200 million a year, San Francisco has to do better.

Which brings us to Supervisor Sandoval.

In some ways, Sandoval is exactly what we haven't wanted in the Assessor's Office: a politician. But at least his political record gives us a valid way to judge his willingness to take on and win tough battles.

His voting record on the Board of Supervisors is mixed: He's been way too soft on the Fire Department. He hid in his office to avoid voting on health benefits for transgendered city employees (although when he finally came out, he voted the right way). He's known to pander a bit to some of the less-savory constituent groups: He's enthusiastically endorsed by the Police Officers Association, for example, and is quoted in the POA newspaper as saying he would consider changing Proposition H, the landmark 2003 reform that gave the supervisors more control over the Police Commission. He's received money from all sorts of sleazy lobbyists. Clear Channel, which owns most of the billboards in the city and is one of the worst examples of monopolistic media in the nation (and also happens to control a growing part of SF's newspaper distribution system under an exclusive city contract), put Sandoval's face on a big billboard on the corner of Mission and Cesar Chavez Streets. Sandoval says it wasn't a campaign contribution – the billboard refers to the Excelsior Festival and doesn't say "Sandoval for Assessor" – but it looks terrible and puts him far too close to Clear Channel. And since Ting just hit Clear Channel for some big money, it has a nasty sting of political payback.

In other words, Sandoval is not by any means a political saint. Plus, he has only limited management experience.

But he comes from one of the most conservative districts in town, and in the end, he's mostly been part of the progressive bloc. In fact, as Sup. Chris Daly (not one to pander to his colleagues) points out, on issues involving downtown and corporate power, Sandoval has been absolutely solid – and for an assessor candidate, that's a big deal.

In fact, after a brutal and ugly reelection campaign last year in which downtown forces spent a lot of money and played a lot of dirty tricks to try to oust Sandoval, the supervisor has absolutely no loyalty to the folks who are most abusing the property tax laws.

Sandoval has vowed to fight assessment appeals, to quit giving favorable passes worth millions of dollars to powerful corporations, and to devote his time and energy to bringing in more cash to City Hall by taking on the biggest and wealthiest property owners in town. And unlike Chun or Ting, he actually has a constituency that can hold him to it.

Sandoval, for all his drawbacks, is very much the candidate of the progressive movement. Every progressive supervisor has endorsed him. He's a friend and ally of Green Party luminary Matt Gonzalez. His campaign has come, for the most part, from the left – and if he's elected, there will be an organized, active, and very impatient constituency that will hold him to his promises.

These aren't perfect times, and we don't have perfect choices. Given the reality of the field, we'll go with Sandoval.

Treasurer

Jose Cisneros

Treasurers in California work under some fairly tight confines. They can't use public funds to play the stock market or even pursue investments in mutual funds that the most conservative money managers would consider balanced and low-risk. The last real wiggle room for creative investments was closed by state laws passed in the 1990s after Orange County went bankrupt from using derivatives and other leveraged financial tools that, for a while, showed high returns that were too good to be true.

Jose Cisneros, appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom after Susan Leal moved over to the Public Utilities Commission, is a banker who's brought a solid management hand to the position. He's also used his office as a bully pulpit for trying to encourage poor San Franciscans to establish bank accounts rather than using exploitative check-cashing and payday-loan companies. Through San Francisco's Working Families program, Cisneros is helping low-income residents claim federal Earned Income Tax Credit moneys and including with their checks information on establishing truly free checking accounts that he has encouraged his colleagues in the banking world to offer.

His chief opponent, accountant Calvin Louie, is well-meaning and has some credible qualifications for the job, but he has failed to make his case that Cisneros needs to be defeated.

City attorney

Dennis Herrera

When Dennis Herrera arrived at the City Attorney's Office four years ago, the place was desperately in need of change. Louise Renne, the longtime incumbent, had run the office as if it were the private law firm for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and big downtown businesses. Renne actively promoted government secrecy and helped Mayor Willie Brown oversee the most corrupt City Hall administration in half a century.

Herrera, who had been a Brown appointee to the Police Commission, wasn't our first choice for the job, and we were skeptical of his ability to operate an independent office in the public interest. In many ways, we've been pleasantly surprised. Herrera is accessible, has taken big steps to bring more sunshine to City Hall, and has used his office to push legal issues like same-sex marriage. He's also sued PG&E, sued the construction giant Tutor Saliba for construction problems at San Francisco International Airport, sued school district contractors, sued Aimco (a property management firm that runs a public housing project in Hunters Point), and won some big chunks of cash for local government.

To his credit, Herrera has ended the practice of sending a deputy city attorney to defend department heads appearing before the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, has held regular training sessions for city officials on the sunshine law, and is far, far more willing to release public records than Renne was.

There are still real problems Herrera needs to address. City officials still routinely hide public information, and Herrera isn't vigilant enough about demanding an end to what is still a climate of secrecy. And he's far too cautious on key legal issues: Instead of encouraging the supervisors to break PG&E's franchise-fee agreement or to take a tough line in contract talks with Comcast, Herrera has dissuaded the board from fighting those battles. He told us he sees his job as being that of a conservative advisor, and letting the supervisors set policy, but he ought to be doing on deals with big corporations the same thing he did (properly and laudably) on same-sex marriage: pushing the law as far as possible. San Francisco should be the national leader on issues like franchise deals; instead, we're lagging behind.

And Herrera has never been willing to take the initiative and do what only the San Francisco city attorney or the US interior secretary can do: go into federal court and force the city to enforce the Raker Act and create a public power system. Herrera says he supports public power and blames the supervisors for failing to act more aggressively, and he's not entirely wrong. But he is the only city official who can single-handedly change the city's energy future, kick PG&E out of town, ensure that the federal government won't take over the city's Hetch Hetchy dam, and end the biggest scandal in the city's history – and he hasn't done it.

Herrera's running unopposed, and we're happy to endorse him for another term. He's certainly raised the quality of the office dramatically. But unopposed incumbents always make us nervous, and Herrera has a lot of work still to do in the next four years to live up to his potential.

Ballot measures

Proposition A

Community College District bonds

NO We support spending money on public education. We support higher taxes to benefit schools, and we always have. We've supported every single bond measure to raise money for schools and colleges that's come along at the state or local level for more than 20 years. And we'd like to support this one too. But we can't.

Proposition A would authorize the sale of $243 million in general-obligation bonds to pay for a long list of new and imp roved facilities for the Community College District, which serves 100,000 San Franciscans, many of them low-income students. City College is a civic treasure, and every single one of the proposals on the table, from completing the Mission Campus to building a new performing arts center, is eminently worthy.

The problem is that the Community College Board, which runs the institution, isn't worthy at all. The seven-member panel is made up mostly of political hacks and leftover machine operatives – and frankly, given the recent record, we don't trust them with the money.

The last time the district came around asking for money, in 2001, we supported the bond act, with reservations. The district, we pointed out, wasn't willing to abide by the Sunshine Ordinance, San Francisco's landmark open-government law, and we were wary of giving the board a huge chunk of public cash without adequate oversight. But Chancellor Phil Day and several board members promised to work with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force on a policy for City College, and we took it as a sign of good faith.

The bond act won – and four years later, City College is still fighting the task force over key sunshine provisions. More alarming, the board took money that the voters had been told would go for an arts center and diverted it to build a fancy gym and pool that are going to be leased out part of the time for the use of private-school students.

This bond act was rushed to the ballot after a private meeting in the mayor's office early in August (Mayor Gavin Newsom apparently didn't want the City College bonds competing with a huge San Francisco General Hospital bond act that's in the works for next year). The deal was so quick and secretive that two board members, Milton Marks III and Julio Ramos, took the unusual step of voting against it, arguing that the district should wait and get more public input.

Now Marks tells us he's supporting the measure. "I'm not happy with the process," he said in an endorsement meeting. "But the needs of the community are so enormous."

And indeed they are. And there's no question that the costs of construction will go up over the next year, and that it would be cheaper, on paper, to start building as soon as possible.

But at a certain point, when a public agency has demonstrated a disdain for public accountability and a basic lack of respect for the trust and will of the voters, we have to say no. Sorry. We hate to make the students suffer for the failures of the board, but until the people who run City College clean up their act (or better yet, until most of the incumbents are thrown out and a new board is elected) we can't keep writing checks. Vote no on A.

Proposition B

Street- and sidewalk-improvement bonds

YES A funny thing happened this summer as the city was gearing up to host delegates from the United Nations for World Environment Day. Suddenly, a bike lane appeared on Market Street beside UN Plaza, where no bike lane had been before. This wasn't your ordinary narrow bike lane that scarcely leaves room for one cyclist to pass another. It was the same size as the lanes designated for cars. In other words, this was a biker's utopia.

If this can be done on Market Street to impress visiting dignitaries, then it can be done almost anywhere in San Francisco. The problem is, for years City Hall has neglected the streets and sidewalks, making these public spaces unfriendly and at times dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. It's gotten so bad that even drivers are beginning to take notice.

A $208 million general-obligation bond financed by property taxes, Proposition B would fund street repairs and sidewalk-improvement projects citywide. A chunk of the money would go to making sidewalks more accessible for disabled people. About $28 million would fund traffic-calming and pedestrian-safety programs, and $8 million would target bicycle-safety projects.

The supervisors missed an opportunity here to impose a congestion charge or raise parking fees to stick drivers with more of the cost of street improvements. But the reality is that most property owners in San Francisco are also car owners. With better sidewalks, more bike lanes, and smoother streets (so buses move more quickly), perhaps more people will start getting out of their cars. Vote yes on B.

Proposition C

Ethics Commission budget and outside counsel

YES San Francisco has a mixed record on campaign-finance reform. With low contribution limits, a ranked-choice voting system, a public financing program, and easily accessible campaign-finance databases, the city has been a national leader in progressive reforms. Even the creation of a somewhat independent Ethics Commission was an important move in creating a political watchdog.

But over the past few years, the flaws in the city's system have been laid bare for all to see – and crafty campaign lawyers have exploited those weaknesses on behalf of their clients and themselves. And most of the problems with the Ethics Commission could be addressed with the two simple changes that Proposition C proposes: giving the commission the resources and independence it needs to carry out its mandate.

The budget at Ethics has been slashed in recent years even as its responsibilities have grown, creating a huge backlog in simply processing the forms it requires and leaving virtually no money to investigate the new and ever-more-insidious ways downtown power brokers keep devising to skirt campaign-finance laws. This measure would establish a baseline budget based on workload and comparisons to similar cities and limit the mayor's ability to go below that.

The measure would also make it easier for the commission to retain outside counsel when the City Attorney's Office has a conflict of interest, as is often the case when Ethics investigates an elected official.

We're not typically supportive of ballot-box budgeting, but in this case, it makes sense: Ethics, by its nature, is likely to be in conflict with the same people who now have the power to set its funding and who control its legal representation. Vote yes on C.

Proposition D

Appointment of Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors

YES It's no surprise Newsom is opposing Proposition D, a ballot measure that would take away three of his appointments to the Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors and hand them over to the Board of Supervisors. Newsom currently appoints all members of the MTA board, the folks who brought you the last two Muni fare hikes and a laundry list of service cuts this time around.

But strangely, Newsom gave voters a strong reason to support Proposition D by nominating Hunter Stern to fill a vacancy on the MTA board. Stern has no experience overseeing a major transit operation. He's a business representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Wor kers union, representing PG&E employees, who is best known for siding with PG&E against the public power movement. (Last month, the supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Stern's nomination.)

Newsom's decision to put forward Stern for the board sums up much of what is wrong with how transportation decisions in this city are made. The mayor didn't ask transit activists who ought to oversee Muni. He didn't request that the Board of Supervisors hold hearings to discuss potential candidates, the way the supes would do it if Prop. D is approved. Instead, Newsom took the word of a few labor leaders who said Stern is their guy, and he forwarded their nomination.

In recent years, the voters have given the district-elected Board of Supervisors authority to make some commission appointments that all used to be made by the mayor. That's been a positive step in reducing the power of the Mayor's Office.

Opponents call this a power grab, and in a sense, they're right. By approving Prop. D, Muni riders can take power back from the mayor and ensure that an accountable, district-elected board has some say in the absolutely crucial job of running Muni. Vote yes.

Proposition E

Assessor-recorder, public defender election date

YES This one's a no-brainer. Sponsored by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Proposition E would move the date of the election for county assessor-recorder and public defender from the spring primary to the general election in November. (The assessor's race is on this November's ballot because an appointed incumbent must face the voters.) The only reason the spring election ever made sense was that it allowed for a November runoff – but with ranked-choice voting now in place, that's not an issue. There's always more turnout in November. Vote yes.

Proposition F

Neighborhood firehouses

NO, NO, NO Everybody loves firefighters. These brave souls charge into burning houses to save grandmothers and stand ready to help when the inevitable terrorist attack or natural disaster hits. Firefighters play a vital role in San Francisco and deserve to be well paid for their risky jobs. And we even agree with the San Francisco Firefighters Union Local 798 that Newsom's decision to close the budget gap with rotating "brownouts" of fire stations was a deceptive and financially wasteful way to avoid outright station closures.

Nonetheless, Proposition F would be an unmitigated disaster for San Francisco. This is ballot-box budgeting at its very worst, locking yesterday's service levels into a changing world and guaranteeing future cuts in social services, infrastructure maintenance, and other important city functions.

It makes no sense to mandate that all 42 fire stations, whose districts were designed in the days of horse-pulled fire trucks, stay open forever. Already, technological changes like faster engines and ambulances, computer-aided dispatching, and lighter hoses and other equipment have speeded response times, and modern construction methods, building codes, and safety devices like smoke alarms have dramatically cut the number of dangerous fires. Groups from the Controller's Office to the Grand Jury to Coleman Advoc ates for Children and Youth have already made good cases that some existing stations could be closed without sacrificing public safety.

Yet even as technology continues to improve, and as the city looks for more efficient ways to respond to the medical calls that make up the vast majority of the department workload, the Firefighters Union wants to lock the city into preserving those 42 stations.

There's nothing in this measure that would raise a penny of new revenue to pay for the more than $6 million a year it would cost. In fact, the Firefighters Union has rarely supported any new taxes or revenue measures (and has often opposed public power, which would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year). So the measure will lead to significant cuts in other programs. Vote no.

Proposition G

Access to underground parking at Golden Gate Park

YES This is a compromise measure to deal with a problem that didn't have to exist. Seven years ago, we warned that Proposition J, which authorized the construction of a privately funded underground parking garage to serve the refurbished M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, was a bad idea. We argued that the plan, backed by wealthy financier Warren Hellman, would pave the way toward the privatization of part of a public park – and would encourage more traffic.

But Prop. J passed, leading to years of electoral battles and legal disputes. Now we'v e got Proposition G, the result of a settlement between parking garage developers and local environmentalists, meant to avert the creation of a third traffic lane inside the park, along Martin Luther King Way leading from Lincoln Way to the Music Concourse.

Here are the gory details: Prop. J called for the garage to be fed exclusively by dedicated access lanes from outside the park. Yet a court ruling favoring the developers allowed for an entrance-exit inside the park. But there still had to be a dedicated traffic lane for the garage. The developers' solution: widen MLK.

Prop. G, brokered by Mirkarimi, amends Prop. J to allow for an entrance-exit inside the park so long as there's also "a separate entrance-exit outside the Park," and specifies that dedicated access lanes would not be required after all. It also prohibits the creation of a third lane on MLK for anything other than pedestrians, bicycles, or public transportation.

It's not the best scenario. We'd still prefer tougher restrictions on motorized traffic in the park. But it's the best alternative we've got. Vote yes.

Proposition H

Firearm ban

YES In terms of per capita bloodshed, San Francisco doesn't come close to Detroit, Washington, DC, Chicago, or any number of other horrifically violent American cities. Still, this place has its problems: Each year 50 to 90 people, most of them young black men, are kille d within our city limits. Each death is a preventable tragedy.

Despite Newsom's well-publicized visits to the housing projects, the city's official response to this carnage has been pathetic. Police are solving damn few of these killings, while local prosecutors have been slow on the draw. According to a recent story in the Daily Journal, a respected legal newspaper, District Attorney Kamala Harris has filed murder charges in only three black-on-black homicides.

Supporters of Proposition H say it will have a real impact on the problem. The ballot measure would bar all San Francisco residents from possessing handguns and would ban the manufacture, distribution, and sale of all firearms within city limits. Only law enforcement personnel, and a small number of others who have specific professional reasons for possessing handguns, would be exempted.

If Prop. H passes and succeeds in reducing the number of guns on the streets, we should see a decline in the number of homicides, the vast majority of which are committed with handguns.

Devoted gun owners, obviously, hate the idea. They say thugs will still get guns, simply by driving to San Mateo County, home to a bunch of gun shops, or on the black market. They say the law may backfire by driving up the street value of guns, thus creating a financial incentive for folks to traffic in firearms. They say the National Rifle Association will sue to overtu rn the law.

This is reasonable speculation. These things could come to pass. But there's another possibility here, as well: Prop. H may end up saving lives, and if so, San Francisco would serve as a national model for curbing urban violence.

Given the gravity of the situation, it's certainly worth a try.

Proposition I

Military recruiters in public schools

YES Opposition to military recruitment has become one of the most important elements of the antiwar movement, and for good reason: Wars can't be fought without soldiers. And two of the top reasons young people enlist in the military are to get help paying for college and to receive vocational-skills training.

Proposition I takes on both sides of the equation. It would formalize San Francisco's opposition to military recruitment in the public schools and ask local representatives to make more scholarships available for education and professional training as alternatives to military service.

It's not going to stop the war alone. In fact, it won't even stop military recruiting. The federal government requires schools to share student records with the military, and to allow recruiters to operate on campus, as a prerequisite to funding.

In fact, Prop. I is a mere declaration of policy: It does not order schools to break federal law, and thus it does not place them at risk of losing funds. It just places San Francisco on recor d as objecting to military recruiters using the educational system to target our young people. And it encourages our civic leaders to seek out nonmilitary alternatives for those who need extra support to get through college or land a solid job.

But these kinds of measures help register support for an important aspect of the antiwar drive, provide an impetus for progressive policy making on the local level , and have hel ped turn the tide before – against the Vietnam War, for example.

Vote yes.