By G.W. Schulz

This week we posted a story about two contractors hired by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District in 2001 to complete phase two of its ongoing (and over-budget) retrofit.

The original contract was for $122 million, but a spokesperson for the bridge told us this week that the joint venture formed by two contractors to bid on the job, Shimmick-Obayashi, would actually earn more than $150 million for the work, which is almost finished.

Our story explains that following the accidental death of a carpenter named Kevin Noah, Shimmick-Obayashi was fined $26,000 by Cal/OSHA for allegedly failing to properly rig Noah’s fall protection and also for not providing workers with scaffolding to stand on where the footing was less than 20 inches wide.

But Shimmick-Obayashi never paid the fines, because on appeal three years later, a lawyer from the company argued that the original citation didn’t contain its full legal name. An administrative judge bought the claim and tossed all of the citations.

What we didn’t have space for in the story was explaining the extent of the construction work both companies have conducted in the Bay Area.

60-story Millennium Tower

By Tim Redmond

Jake McGoldrick was the swing vote on the wrong side on the 3400 Cesar Chavez project. Some interesting comments and debate here.

I don't think McGoldrick is corrupt (as one commenter says at leftinsf), and I'm not going to support the attempt to recall him (as another proposes), but I'm deeply disappointed. McGoldrick is a housing guy; he knows better than this.

I live near 3400 Cesar Chavez, and the plan is terrible for the neighborhood. We could have stopped it, and opened the door to a real affordable housing effort. Damn.

Isn't this special? Joe Veronese, police commission member and state Senate candidate, and Julie Veronese, pose with Warren Hinckle, who is in his usual sartorial splendor. (Thanks to Luke Thomas and Fog City Journal)

by Amanda Witherell

photo courtesy of Green Guerrillas, www.letsgreenwashthiscity.org

Some of the city's PG&E watchdogs are sweating over what the mayor's been up to lately and are worried he may sneak a pro-PG&E/anti-public power measure on the ballot by Friday's deadline. Take a look at their concerns here and give ole Gav a ring to let him know what you think.

By Steven T. Jones
After a preliminary hearing, Judge Harold Khan has ruled there is sufficient evidence to put Sup. Ed Jew on trial for perjury and other charges related to the allegations that he doesn't really live in San Francisco and is therefore unqualified to hold off. No big surprise here, but it does raise the question of what Mayor Gavin Newsom is waiting for. Part of his job is to initiate official misconduct proceedings against supervisors were elected fraudulently, or who shake down their constituents for $40,000 cash bribes. Mr. Mayor, what are you waiting for?

By Sarah Phelan

But will the Air Quality District ever levy any asbestos-related fines from Lennar?

If you got the impression from yesterday's Board hearing that Lennar won’t get fined for screwing up asbestos dust mitigation at Parcel A of the Hunters Point Shipyard, think again. Or, at least, hold that thought for now.

Karen Schlocknick, spokesperson for The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, reports that the air district is still looking into the matter—and has “up to three years” to decide how much to fine Lennar.

One year has already passed since Lennar came forward and admitted that there was a problem with the batteries in its air monitors at Parcel A. So, that leaves the Air District with two more years to make its move, though Schlocknick predicts that, “it won’t take that long”.

By Tim Redmond

I came to San Francisco in 1981, and there were people sleeping in Golden Gate Park. Dianne Feinstein, who was the chief exec back then, would periodically try to get rid of them. Art Agnos and Frank Jordan did the same thing. At one point in the 1990s, when Willie Brown was mayor, he discovered the shocking fact as if for the first time, and had a team sweep the campers out. Now the Chronicle has gotten the scoop yet again, and the mayor has dispatched his shock troops and is trying it all anew.

It won't work this time, either.

There simply aren't enough places for homeless people to sleep in this town. The shelters are unpleasant and often dangerous, and don't work for people who are opposite-sex couples (all the shelters are men- or women-only) or people who have dogs (and there are quite a few homeless people with dogs). They aren't a long-term answer for people who drink or take drugs, since they're all alcohol and drug-free (or are supposed to be).

The transitional housing the mayor is promoting is fine -- but there are thousands of homeless people and not enough rooms for all of them. So if you sweep the park, you just get homeless people sleeping in doorways.

Mark Salomon had an interesting post on this on the PRO-SF listserv; you can read it after the jump.

by Amanda Witherell

This is sort of funny and sort of annoying, considering that when I contacted Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to request a tour for a story I was working on about the future of nuclear power, I was denied admittance and told:

"All tour requests are screened against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's post-9/11 requirement that U.S. nuclear plant licensees provide tours only when there is a clear business need. Upon review of your request, we have determined that it does not meet this screening requirement."

Which is total bullshit. The same week I made my request, a reporter at the OC Register got a tour of San Onofre.

That aside, this guy got a free ride in!

By Steven T. Jones
There's still one more week for candidates to get into the mayor's race -- and I wouldn't be at all surprised if more people jump in now that Matt Gonzalez has bowed out. But for now, the two most interesting candidates are Josh Wolf and Chicken John, who will face off in a debate/fundraiser this Sunday evening. It promises to be at least as interesting and substantive and Mayor Gavin Newsom's lame town hall meetings, albeit without the bevy of department heads paid by taxpayers to be there. No, expect this one to be a bit more edgy and free form.
The event takes place at Chez Poulet (aka Chicken's performance-friendly home) at 3359 Chavez (which Chicken still stubbornly calls Army) St. @ Mission starting around 9 p.m. A $10 donation is requested.

By Tim Redmond

Here's a classic Gavin Newsom idea: Since he can't get the supervisors to sign off on a baldly flawed wi-fi plan (which the prime contractor may be ready to abandon anyway), there's talk that the mayor will simply put his wi-fi plan on the ballot.

That way Earthlink and Google (if they still want to do this thing) can put up a bunch of money, and newsom can use it to claim he's trying to get something done (and he can bash the supes a bit in the process) and the rest of us will have to spend a bunch of time and money fighting to stop a dumb idea from getting voter approval.

Wi-fi and Community Choice Aggregation; it could be the all-privatization ballot.

By Sarah Phelan

ATSDR's Region 9 office covers a lot of ground, including San Francisco's Hunters Point Shipyard.

Susan Muza works at the Region 9 office of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. That's the agency that agreed on July 17 to do a public health assessment of Lennar's development at Parcel A of the Hunters Point Shipyard where fear runs high that the community may have been exposed to toxic asbestos dust.

Community members voiced those fears during a July 31 Board hearing, but the Board voted 6-5 against urging the SF Department of Health to temporarily shutting down Lennar's construction site, until health concerns had been addressed.

As it happens, ATSDR has experience with such assessments in California, thanks to Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado County, where naturally occurring asbestos was identified in surrounding rocks and where a vein of asbestos was disturbed during construction of a soccer field at the school.

Muza told me that at Oak Ridge High, ATSDR sampled and tested soil from baseball and soccer fields, parking lots, as well as dust collected from a school classroom that had potentially been affected by a leaf blower.

What ATSDR found, says Muza, was that “sports coaches, outdoor maintenance staff and student athletes had the potential to be exposed at levels higher than previously thought.”

In the case of Lennar’s Parcel A development, the classrooms and basketball courts of the Muhammed University of Islam sit on the other side of a chain link fence, where massive amounts of asbestos-laden rock were moved in the last year, but where air monitors weren’t operating for three months, and watering was inadequate for six months.

“At Oak Ridge High, we recommended that people try to limit any further exposure and that those most highly exposed inform their physicians that they had potentially been exposed to asbestos, that they should monitor for signs of disease, related to that exposure, and that they should participate in very good preventative care, such as flu shots, to make sure their respiratory health stays healthy," Muza said.

ATSDR is also monitoring cancer registers in the EL Dorado area.

As Muza notes, “one big problem with asbestos is it has a long lag time. The period between exposure happening and disease manifesting can be 10-40 years.”

Although the San Francisco Department of Public Health has claimed that workers were wearing CAL OSHA authorized asbestos monitors at the Hunters Point shipyard site and that CAL OSHA did not report any exposure exceedances, Muza told me that ATSDR does not support using worker asbestos limits in evaluating community members’ exposures, other than as a reference point.

As ATSDR’s website explains, “worker limits are based on risk levels that would be considered unacceptable in nonworker populations.”
The reasoning behind disqualifying worker limits as a valid assessment tool is that community members may be children who are lower to ground, more active and have higher metabolisms. Or they may be seniors, or residents who live near the site, 24/7.

“No exposure to asbestos is good,” says Muza. “We are all exposed to it, thanks to brake linings, amongst other things, but we want to keep our exposure as minimal as we can.”

In the case of Oak Ridge High, ATSDR recommended some removal activities, because material from the vein of asbestos that got broken when the soccer field was built, got spread around the school.

“And we recommended paving and landscaping activities to reduce people’s ability to being exposed,” adds Muza, noting that ATSDR did not recommend that Oak Ridge High be closed or relocated.

In San Francisco, ATSDR plans to evaluate the asbestos dust mitigation plan that Lennar agreed to when it got the green light to begin development on Parcel A in 2005. ATSDR will also evaluate how Lennar actually implemented that plan, along with results from air monitors, and any other data that they can ascertain will be helpful.

“We also plan to gather community concerns, be very transparent and talk to everyone,” says Muza who has sent out a letter to stakeholders, including the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Bayview Hunters Point Project Area Committee, the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, The San Francisco Chapter of the NAACP, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and, of course, the Muhammed University of Islam.

Says Muza, “We will summarize the concerns we hear, sort out what we can address from what we can’t and come to the community with a plan.”

By Steven T. Jones
Our political leaders in Sacramento apparently still can't muster the courage to create a high-speed rail system for California, which is perhaps the single most important public works project for addressing climate change and the hopelessly congested freeways and airports we'll otherwise see in coming decades. After a tentative agreement two months ago to give the California High-Speed Rail Authority less than half of the $103 million it needs to move the project forward (which was better than the insulting $1.2 million offered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger), the most recent deal gives the authority just $15.5 million. And even that could get line item vetoed by the Governator.
Assemblymember Fiona Ma had pledged to safeguard this important project and it doesn't appear she's been very effective so far (maybe she should spend less time doing Clear Channel's bidding in trying to line our freeways with obnoxious electronic billboards). But her flak, Nick Hardman, tells me she's working hard to make sure the high-speed rail bond measure remains on the fall 2008 ballot, from which is can be removed with a simply majority this year, but only with a two-thirds vote of both houses after Jan. 1. This will be an important test for Ma, who has said that the project is one of her top priorities.
Stay tuned.

Greatest career path, ever. Mental note: little flag pins.

By Marke B.

I love it. Really! Congress has just voted in a basic legal carte blanche for the Administration to spy on Americans' emails and phone convos without any court review. Ostensibly, the new law is only to target foreigners who talk to Americans by allowing the government to tap into fiber optic networks based in the US (previously they could only tap into those based on foreign soil) -- and the Administration promises -- PROMISES -- not to use any tips obtained this way to go after Americans on the one end of the conversation. I believe them! Only foreigners are terrorists anyway (sorry, Oklahoma).

The best parts?

*Telecommunications companies must obey the government on this. No more of those pesky legal challenges from the more skeptical among them that were gumming up the spyworks. And no more of that free market hooey from our overlords. Just make the corporations do what you want. Terror!

*Bye-bye to FISA, the oversight court set up in the '70s in reaction to Nixonian dirty tricks re: domestic spying. Guess who gets final approval on who gets spied on when? ALBERTO GONZALES. Guess all that lying and "misremembering" and total dereliction of basic duty evidenced when he was in the congressional hotseats -- what, three times in the past 3 months? -- convinced Congress that he should be in charge of the nation's privacy. Way to go Alberto! I've GOT to try your tactics in my own career.

Remind me why I was happy about the Dems taking Congress again? WTF?

By Tim Redmond

The Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating whether state Sen. Carole Migden violated campaign finance laws. That's not the first time a local politician has been investigated and it won't be the last, but this one has some odd and potentially very significant twists.

For one thing, Migden's campaign manager admits that the charges are "absolutely legitimate." And if one of the key allegations is true -- that Midgen illegally transfered $1 million from an Assembly race account and another $500,000 from a Board of Equalizaton race account to her state Senate campaign coffers -- then she may have a real problem. She may have to stop spending that money -- if if she did that, her financial advantage over challenger Mark Leno would evaporate.

By Tim Redmond

Sasha at leftinsf has the right line on the mayor's sudden move to put a nonbinding wifi measure on the ballot: The guy never approved of nonbinding resolutions before (he's ignored Question Time), but now he wants one of his own. And it's going to be so simple: Free wifi for all. Who can be against that? (As long as you don't look at the details.)

By Steven T. Jones
There's lots of talk about a compromise that might avert this fall's campaign battle between advocates of giving even more space to cars (the downtown, developer and conservative players who paid $60K for a measure to undo progressive city parking policies) and those who understand that we must fix Muni and provide for more transportation alternatives if we're to avoid gridlock, global warming, air pollution, and ugly and dangerous auto-centric neighborhoods.
But personally, I think this is a debate that we should confront head on -- particularly now that top campaign consultant Jim Stearns will be running the effort to approve Sup. Aaron Peskin's Muni measure (which will kill the heinous pro-parking proposal if it passes, thanks to Peskin's smarts and spine). "This is the future of San Francsico transit that we're debating," Stearns told me.
A hard-fought campaign would also expose Gavin Newsom's underhanded tactics in undermining smart growth policies on behalf of his downtown backers, as well as a new analysis by Planning Director Dean Macris of how the downtown-backed parking push would reverse city policy and conflict with our General Plan in ways that may be illegal, and which are most certainly short-sighted and stupid.
But then again, this parking measure is so bad that perhaps we should opt for certain death instead of giving it any chance at all, as long as we don't weaken the city's long-established transit-first stance in the process.

By Tim Redmond

Sup. Chris Daly, who unequivocally was not running for mayor a few weeks ago, is now actually talking about it again. The journalist in me says that’s a wonderful idea – raise some issues, stir up a fuss, force Newsom to face a real challenger in a real debate …. Makes for great stories.

The San Francisco progressive in me is a bit more nervous.

Daly’s not going to win, not without some sort of stunning event. (Which is possible; I mean, Newsom could utterly melt down in October, start babbling incoherently, punch out Dan Noyes on camera, admit he was secretly funding the weapons procurement program at Your Black Muslim Bakery or something …. And Daly could suddenly find himself the front runner.)

But for all practical purposes, the point of a mayoral race would be twofold: To raise issues while holding Newsom accountable – and, equally important, to build momentum for the fall 2008 supervisorial races.

I can’t emphasize enough how important the 08 races are – control of the board, and the political agenda in the city, will be at stake. Tom Ammiano, Aaron Peskin, Jake McGoldrick, and Gerardo Sandoval will be gone, victims of term limits. Ross Mirkarimi will be up for re-election, as will Sean Elsbernd. In four key open seats, the entire balance of power in the city could shift.

So the question is: Does Daly as a mayoral candidate help progressives win those seats by generating energy and organizing talent the way Ammiano’s 1999 race and Matt Gonzalez’s 2003 race did? There are, as I've pointed out before, some good things about a Daly for Mayor campaign. Or does Daly, who is not terribly popular outside his district, actually drag down progressive candidates by losing badly to Newsom and allowing the mayor’s forces to brand all the progressives as Daly-ites?

Can this race bring us all together as progressives, or just create more rifts?

If Daly wants to run, he’s got some work to do, because this, of course, is much bigger than him. And I think he knows that.

When Gonzalez decided to run four years ago, it seemed like a bit of a last-minute unilateral decision, and a lot of the activists in town felt left out. Daly’s got to do better: He needs to be sure that at least some of his progressive board colleagues (many of whom he’s been fighting with) will endorse him and help; running without any support from other progressive leaders would be tough. He needs to mend fences with some of his slightly bruised pals (which would be a good thing to do anyway).

He needs to line up some community backers and seasoned campaign workers who will sign on for the battle. He needs to think about how he’s going to raise money.

Of course, there are always surprises; state Sen. Carole Migden is in a big fight of her own, against Assembly member Mark Leno, and Leno is backing Newsom. Maybe Migden would support and raise money for Daly, who she’s been close to in the past (and who is supporting her over Leno). Which would make for an interesting political season.

But again, the question at hand is how will this benefit the progressive cause, not just now but over the long haul. Three days of hard thinking to go.

By Tim Redmond

The mayor continues to push forward with his wifi plans, but check out this Mercury News piece on how Newsom-style programs aren't working out so well in other places.

By Tim Redmond

If you don't like the notion of a 1,200-foot tower scarring San Francisco's skyline -- and I don't -- then maybe you ought to read this fascinating piece on Calitics, and stop for a minute to think about what this city, and this state, is doing.

Why do we have to live with a giant highrise office tower near the Transbay Terminal? Because if we don't, there won't be any money to build what should be the central transit link for the Bay Area, a landmark bus and train station on the scale (we're told) of Grand Central in New York. It's an essential part of the city's future.

But the project costs a lot of money, almost a billion dollars -- and nobody wants to pay higher taxes to fund this sort of thing. In fact, nobody in California wants to pay higher taxes for anything. So the folks at City Hall have decided that the only way we can have a new transit terminal is if we hock a piece of our city and our skyline to fund it. So we take some of the land on the terminal site and let a developer build a monstrosity of a highrise on it -- and that will bring in the money that we can't get any other way.

It 's the same reason we have that god-awful RIncon Tower sticking its ugly head into the sky: The developer offered to pay for a fair amount of affordable housing and other community amenities that the taxayers won't fund because local government can't raise taxes in California without reaching extraordinary lengths that are almost politically impossible. So here's the deal: You want affordable housing? Give a big developer the rights to do something awful, and in exchange, we'll get a few dollops of cash for civic needs.

Imagine, for a moment, what the state might look like if we'd had to cut this kind of deal to build the University of California system. You want nice colleges? Okay -- sell off the coast and let it become a giant Miami Beach. You don't want to do that? Too bad -- no world-class university system for your kids.

This is the devil's bargain we have agreed to settle for in 2007, and it sucks.

By Steven T. Jones
The word is that Chris Daly is meeting with supporters tonight to decide whether to run for mayor. It could probably go either way. Meanwhile, there's an increasingly strong movement underway to draft Janet Reilly into running for mayor. She didn't return my call asking about it, but we're hearing from some who say she's thinking about it. The advantages of a Reilly run are that she could dump lots of her own money into the campaign, she's a woman, she's good-looking and smart, she doesn't bring a lot of negative baggage with her, she's acceptable to many progressives and many swells, and she'd capture a lot of voters who are sick of both Newsom and Daly.
In fact, she could even win, particularly if Daly got in and he, Ahimsa Sumchai, and Chicken John were hitting Newsom from the left and Tony Hall was taking his nastiest punches from the right. Reilly could stay above the fray and be there to take advantage of a Newsom meltdown, which is always a possibility. Hmmm, it's something to think about, at least for the two days until the Friday 5 p.m. deadline.

By Tim Redmond

Sahsa at leftinsf has the full text of the mayor's wifi initiative posted, and a phrase I hadn't known about just leaps out:

(4) The City should initially provide the Wi-Fi Network through a public-private partnership that utilizes expertise of the high technology sector and minimizes financial risk to the City;

In other words, the mayor's official declaration of policy (also signed by Sup. Aaron Peskin, who ought to know better) directly takes on and attempts to derail any type of municipal wifi service. The way Newsom is putting it out, we simply must privatize this piece of public infrastructure.

Nice work.

By Tim Redmond

I'm really glad Paul Hogarth of Beyond Chron got to ask Hillary Clinton a tough question at the YearlyKos conference. And I'm glad his excellent query got some media bounce. I still think this was a little over the top, but nobody who works at the Guardian should ever complain about a little self-promotion.

But what makes this so astonishing is that it's even news in the first place. No discredit to Hogarth, and I'm not in any way minimizing his work or the importance of what he did, but why did it take a 29-year-old blogger from San Francisco to do what the high-paid, high-profile crackerjacks who are covering the presidential race for the mainstream media ought to be doing every day, as a matter of course?

By Tim Redmond

So the mayor and Sup. Bevan Dufty have officially dropped the ball. They have decided to (more or less unilaterally) eliminate any sort of Castro Street celebration, but they have nothing to replace it with.

So what happens when a bunch of partiers still decided to go to the Castro and have fun? What if bar owners decide to defy Dufty and stay open that night? Will the cops come and round everyone up? Will they send in water trucks to hose down the celebration?

What do Dufty and Newsom think a few houndred thousand people are going to do on Halloween -- stay home? Not likely.

by Amanda Witherell

Yikes, doesn't this picture give you the willies? It's from the Japanese nuclear power plant, located on a fault line like another nuke plant we know. (Ahem, Diablo Canyon.) Last month it succumbed to the Murphy's Law of its seismology. This week a UK Times reporter took a tour of the facility and reports that officials are actually considering restarting the reactors even though the superstructure is still impassable and waste leaked out after the quake. Awesome.

By Tim Redmond

Sup. Chris Daly, who was talking over the past few days about a campaign for mayor, has decided against it. He sent a statement tonight; I'll post the whole thing:

Progressive Allies and Friends,

For the past 6.5 years, we have enjoyed strong
progressive politics in San Francisco. Progressive
San Francisco has delivered a new era of worker’s
rights with the nation’s highest minimum wage,
universal health coverage, and paid sick days.
Requiring significant amounts of affordable housing
and other public benefits, we’ve made development work
for communities. We've set the agenda on workers'
rights, housing, health care, city services,
transportation, and the environment. Our political
opponents, even holding the office of Mayor, have been
on the defensive.

Despite our political strength and its marquis
standing in local political races, it's clear that
we've had difficulty engaging in this year's Mayor's
race. Progressives share a principled critique of the
personality-driven politics practiced by our
opponents. We elevate the issues important to
everyday people above our own political advancement
and personal self-interest. We are right to do so.
Unfortunately, this does not always translate well
into the mainstream and corporate-controlled media.

For the better part of a year, I felt a great deal of
responsibility to find a strong progressive candidate
for Mayor, all the while acknowledging that I was not
our best possible candidate. There were discussions,
caucuses, lunches, and even a Progressive Convention
aimed at compelling a progressive entry into the race.
With news last week of the final potential candidate
forgoing the race, I decided to take another look at
making a run.

This past week Progressive San Francisco produced a
flurry of activity about that possibility. I was
heartened and inspired that so many were willing to
step up in the face of significant odds. Dozens of
you dropped what you were doing to spend hours on end
with me this week. Hundreds pledged your support.
The outpouring gave me hope that we do have what it
takes to take back Room 200 and deliver social and
economic justice to San Francisco.

However, I have decided not to file a candidacy for
the Office of Mayor.

Given the negative, million-dollar campaign against me
last year, there was never a question that this
Mayor's race would be brutal. The incumbent promised
as much in a meeting this week. Our ideas are better,
and I was committed to running a campaign about our
issues. But most of us had reservations about whether
we'd ever be able to achieve resonance on the issues
against the tide of hits, personal attacks, and media
hype of the Newsom vs. Daly personality clash.

Sarah and I arrived at last night's meeting with the
intention of announcing my entry into the race and
were moved by everyone's willingness to act on faith.
When I called on progressives for support for a
Mayoral run, progressives responded. But I also
sensed that the reservations in the room were real.
Progressives are certainly ready to vie for the
Mayor's seat, but, unfortunately, I am not the right
candidate.

There is some good news. Progressives are much
stronger than we were the last time we didn't field a
challenger for Mayor. Back in '83, the progressive
movement had not recovered from the Milk/Moscone
assassinations and the subsequent repeal of district
elections. Dianne Feinstein enjoyed great popularity
after soundly squashing a recall effort. She went on
to easily win reelection later that year.

Four years later it appeared as if downtown's reign
would continue with the front-running candidacy of
John Molinari. His bid, however, was upset when Art
Agnos united San Francisco's left with a disciplined,
sustained, and effective campaign.

We all know that electoral work is just a part of the
overall effort we need to put forth. There is no
substitute for the basics of organizing and serving
our people so they can live with dignity. I will
always remain committed to the struggle and to
building progressive politics and people power in San
Francisco for the years to come.

Solidarity,

Chris Daly

It would have been a hell of a race, but I respect his decision. Now it's time to focus on the Board of Supervisors races in 2008.

So, last night the Human Right Campaign and homo cable channel-bot LOGO hosted a forum for the Democratic presidential candidates in an Oprah-like setting for a candid grilling about "GLBT issues" -- luckily, for those of us who can't shell out the skittle for subscription cable, it was available live online, in a format that actually worked! Way to go, LOGO server bandwidth! (full disclosure: I was a commentator on the forum for CBS Radio. I'm so mainstream!)

You can view some capture vids and a recap of the debate here.

Kucinich -- "magical love," as always

YES, as a big gay, I did of course get that warm, fuzzy, Pride-trained feeling I'm supposed to get when the folks in the big house descend to talk to l'il ol' me about what they think are my l'il ol' issues. Plus, the intimate "forum" setting (each candidate got 15 minutes in the hot seat while the others waited in back) was ideal for disallowing the candidates to dodge and highlighting their every squirm.

Still, I was prepared to scream "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANNIES!" into the ears of America as a commentator .... and the fact that Melissa Etheridge was one of the interlocutors rolled my eyes backward a bit (altho to her credit her questions were actually pretty potent -- once you got past all the fawning -- and she acknowledged she had no business being there as "neither a professional politician or activist." Tell it to your global-warming Oscar, sweetie.)

By G.W. Schulz

That’s right friends! It’s time again for another trip to the section of the local controller’s Web site containing summaries of the whistleblower complaints received by the city over the last several months. The city closed 153 complaints with investigations out of 313 contacts during the ’06 fiscal year.

Who’s stashing beer in a city-owned vehicle? Who’s doin’ dope on the job?

When I first began reporting full time at the Guardian last year, former staff writer A.C. Thompson showed me where to find the controller’s biannual reports listing some of the investigations that office regularly conducted in response to calls from whistleblowers.

Hungry reporters have scandalous love affairs with pretty much anything coming out of their local controller’s office. It’s a great place to find story ideas, from how much city managers are getting paid to who’s receiving giant contracts to plant trees in city parks and build train stations.

At the time, A.C. and I tried to sunshine documents directly related to the whistleblower investigations, but after haggling with the controller’s office a bit, they finally told us that such a release could potentially compromise the otherwise anonymous identities of the callers. That’s pretty reasonable, actually, and you can still go straight to the agency from which the allegations originated and sunshine info that way. (Let us know if you find anything, and as always, don’t hesitate to bring your whistle straight to the Guardian’s headquarters at 135 Mississippi St. and blow it loud and proud!)

For now, we’ll bring you a summary of the complaints from the city’s newest report:

By Sarah Phelan

Photo by Sarah Phelan

George "Naked Yoga Guy" Davis started to strip off in City Hall, yesterday, shortly after filing his mayoral papers.

Homeless taxi driver and mayoral candidate Grasshopper Alec Kaplan has already removed the numbers from beleagured "D4" supervisor Ed Jew's alleged house in the Sunset District.

Fellow mayoral challenger and fierce blogger H. Brown has been shooting his mouth off about politics for years.

And then of course there is artist Chicken John Rinaldi, who pronounces his name Ri-NAL-di.

But supporters of Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai are accusing the Chronicle of being in Newsom's back pocket after the daily managed to omit all mention of Sumcahi from its August 11 coverage of the race.

Ahimsa outside City Hall on August 10, shortly before filing her mayoral papers.

True, Dr. Sumchai was 20 minutes late for her own August 10 press conference--a tardiness she put down to having to travel by public transit.

But Sumchai's name is clearly on the list of mayoral candidates, and she has been talking about her candidacy since January, when Lennar's failure to properly monitor and control asbestos dust at Hunters Point Shipyard inspired her to enter the race.

Josh Wolf, who is also running for mayor, says his decision wasn't about payback. (Readers may recall that Newsom refused to add his signature to a Board resolution that publicly protested federal interference into an investigation into who assaulted an SFBD officer during a G8 protest turned violent --interference that enabled authorities to circumvent state-approved shield laws and thus keep Wolf in jail for 7 months for refusing to give up his video outtakes of the protest.
"But I'm shocked that Newsom refused to accept a cap on his relection campaign contributions , which have already surpassed $1.6 million," said Wolf. "What's he afraid of?"

Free at last, Wolf files for Mayor of San Francisco

Meanwhile, with rumor having it that Newsom wanted to use Eminem's Lose Yourself as his 2003 election jingle, what would be an appropriate theme song for Newsom's 2007 reelection bid,?

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, the Naked Yoga Guy...

...didn't take it ALL off. At least not this time around.

By Tim Redmond

Joel Kotkin, the widely known urban writer and thinker, has a fascinating piece in the Sunday L.A. Times called "Why the Rush to Manhattanize L.A.?" I don't entirely agree with his argument for L.A.; he writes about New York-style density and says:

It's not so clear, however, that L.A., which has been expanding outward for more than 100 years and is famously sun drenched, car crazy, blessed with natural beauty and earthquake prone, should follow a similar course.

I think it's clear that L.A. can't continue to expand outward, and that it's far too car crazy, and that future growth should be driven by transit, not freeways.

But his larger point is that we are so enamored these days of "new urbanism" and a rush to build tall buildings that we aren't thinking about the long-term impacts:

Ultimately, it comes down to whether Los Angeles will have a serious debate about where it is headed. Jumping blindly on the Manhattan express, without considering the implications for the city and its many great neighborhoods, is not a promising first step.

In San Francisco, we've had this debate for years -- but right now, as the Chronicle is arguing only about which of a group of oversized highrises is the best, we aren't thinking clearly about why we're making these decisions.

By Steven T. Jones
You've got to check out this video of Chicken John becoming an official candidate for mayor, which includes Chicken and his entourage crashing Room 200 and having a funny hallway chat with its current incumbent.
Chicken probably can't win -- and he says that he doesn't even want to, aiming for third place ("Showman to Show") -- but he'll certainly keep this race entertaining.

By G.W. Schulz

*UPDATE: SGT. NEVILLE GITTENS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT'S PRESS OFFICE WANTED TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT HE WAS OUT OF TOWN WHEN WE LEFT A MESSAGE FOR HIM INQUIRING ABOUT THIS REPORT. INDEED, THE SFPD'S PRESS OFFICE NEVER RETURNED OUR CALL, BUT GITTENS SAYS FOR THE RECORD THAT HE WASN'T AT WORK THAT DAY, AND IT WASN'T PERSONALLY HIS FAULT THAT WE DIDN'T HEAR BACK FROM THE DEPARTMENT. THANK YOU FOR THAT CLARIFICATION, SERGEANT.

We were going to save this item for the briefs section on Wednesday, but another piece came up at the last minute, so here you go.

Last week, flaks from the San Francisco Police Department sent out a press release proudly announcing that 40 men and women would be officially graduating from the police academy August 10.

But the department’s badly needed infusion of rookie officers comes with a caveat. Someone recently called the whistleblower hotline at the San Francisco Controller’s Office to complain that an officer “had failed the agility test, but was able to advance to the oral board portion of the exam,” according to a regular summary of the tips posted on the city’s Web site.

The whistleblower reports don't name names but do outline allegations of fraud, waste and employee misconduct in addition to explaining how investigators responded.

Officer Maria Oropeza from the academy wouldn’t answer questions about the complaint and directed us to Sgt. Neville Gittens in the department’s press office, who didn’t return calls by this afternoon.

But an inquiry from the controller responding to the complaint revealed that previously, applicants who failed the physical ability test weren’t allowed to participate in the oral interview. The exam period that inspired the complaint, however, was amended to allow candidates who passed the written examination to join an eligible list and improve their physical fitness in the interim before retaking that portion of the test within two years.

Investigators didn’t conclude that any rules were violated, but there’s no doubt San Francisco is desperate for new officers.

By Tim Redmond

UCSF, which is developing a huge new campus at Mission Bay, wants to put a new research facility a few blocks away on Third Street. The Pritzker Center would focus on mental health for kids, and I'm all in favor of that. Of course, it involves turning a vacant warehouse into essentially office and clinical space, which may violate the city's attempts to preserve blue-collar jobs in the southeast neighborhoods, but we may never hear any discussion of that issue, or of any other planning-related issues, and here's why:

In a remarkable Fuck You to the entire city of San Francisco planning process, UCSF has essentially declared that it doesn't have to abide by any city planning procedures at the site.

This isn't even part of the Mission Bay campus, which is already zoned for UC's use. In fact, UC doesn't actually own the building. So by any normal standard, UCSF would have to apply to the city planning department for environmental review.

No such luck: The school has done its own review, determined on its own that there are no environmental issues, and told the city planners to kiss off.

Maybe the Pritzker Center is a fine use of that space, but it's a scary precedent that could set the stage for UC expanding far beyond Mission Bay, taking other property and turning it to campus use -- without any meaninful community input.

Sue Hestor is fighting the move; you can see her letter as a PDF here.

By G.W. Schulz

We usually call this segment "What's the city's cop union pissed about now?" But the SFPD doesn't appear to have a lot to be pissed about these days, if Gary Delagnes is right in promising that San Francisco police officers will be the highest paid in the nation by the year 2010.

Delagnes (pictured right) is president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, of course, and we like to keep track of what he's complaining about by reading through the often-disturbing POA Journal, a wonderful place to learn what's on the minds of the SFPD's rank-and-file.

In the August issue, Delagnes doesn't get around to attacking Gen-Xers or deriding "community nut jobs." He's too busy promising the fattest paychecks in all the land by the time the union's current contract expires, for which City Hall recently completed negotiations.

Here's the money shot from Delagnes:

"It was a team effort and our mission was accomplished. We will now finally approach our mission of 17 years ago when we vowed to be the highest paid major police department in the country. When that last raise kicks in on July 1, 2010, I believe we will have reached that goal."

There are a lot of things a police department can aspire to, we guess. But nothing could be as important as beating out the other bastards in pay. Delagnes precedes all of this with a stretch of a metaphor. When he played baseball as a young man, he hated to bunt, because, as he writes, he'd much rather clear the fences.

"One time I just ignored the coach's obvious bunt signal. Okay, maybe it was more than just once ... But the one time I do remember 'missing' the signal just about cost us the game. My coach at the time made sure I spent the next couple of games on the bench so that I would remember I was playing a 'team' game."

We're pretty sure Delagnes was trying to say that he couldn't have whipped the city into contractual submission without the rest of his negotiating committee, whom he goes on to thank individually. You know, teamwork. We think. He commits several column inches to this metaphor, and we're still not quite clear on it.

by Amanda Witherell

Ahh, this is so good. I almost don't want to point it out, but hey, we hardly get any laughs when it comes to PG&E.

The corporation recently revived its dormant "Close it Coalition," a fake grassroots community group they cooked up to show the $12 billion company really cares about the pollution their power plant was spewing into the southeast neighborhoods. Now they're opposed to the city's plan to build its own peaker power plant there because of, they claim, the pollution in "our" neighborhood. Most likely they're really against it because it would be owned by the city and not them, but read this Wednesday's issue for more on that.

Anyway they printed up a bunch of mailers that were sent to the Potrero neighborhood, inviting folks to join the Close It Coalition and oppose the new peakers. They also invite you to their website: www.closeitcoalition.org.

Oops, looks like they forgot they aren't a nonprofit. It's actually www.closeitcoalition.com

It also looks like they bought up the alternate domain names of their enemies at www.letsgreenwashthiscity.org and routed them to PG&E's bogus green web site.

Which means they're calling themselves greenwashers. Ha ha. Dorks. My work here is done.

In other greenwashing news: we also heard they nominated themselves for an environmental justice award from the EPA. In the words of our source on that tidbit, "Who nominates themselves for an award?"

Double dorks.

by Amanda Witherell

Geez,,,whales are like pandas and koalas, right? They usually get all the love when it comes to conservation and protection. Not when there's money to be made! As someone who used to spend time out in the middle of the Atlantic hoping to glimpse even a fin of one of these rare whales, it's distressing to see the federal government bending to the pressures of industry...again. Whales may be the largest mammals, but tankers, cruise ships, car ferries, and even whale watching boats are a hell of a lot bigger and should be more tender when plying our communal seas. Researchers say large, fast-moving ships rarely notice if and when they've nailed a whale.

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom does, indeed, have opponents this fall, but none of them are going to raise and spent a million bucks; in fact, none of them are going to make this enough of a race that Newsom will need to spend that kind of money. If he laid off his campaign staff today, never did a single rally, event or mailing and spent not a dime on his re-election he would win handily, probably with 60 percent of the vote.

So why does he need to run a $1.6 million campaign?

Answer: He doesn't. Why not demonstrate some civic goodwill, Mr. Mayor, and donate, say, $1 million of that to charity?

By Tim Redmond

KQED's Forum did an entire hour this morning on the proposed Transbay Terminal project, and the best question come for a seven-year-old.

The panelists were not exactly offering a visionary approach to urban planning: Dean Macris, the interim city planning director who never met a tall building he didn't like, was on, along with the Chronicle's John King, who thinks at least one of the projects is beautiful, and Clark Manus, past president of the American Institute of Architecture. The panel talked about public space and the beauty of these various buildings until a call came in from someone who wouldn't give her name.

Michael Krasny, the host, asked why she wanted to be anonymous. "Because I'm only seven," she said.

Then she asked her question:

Why do we need to build a big highrise anyway? Why not a park?

Well, the guests hemmed and hawed a bit, but Macris finally acknowledged the truth: We're building a highrise not because we want or need another tall building, or because there's such a pent-up demand for highrise office space or because we want to be cooler than Chicago, which is building an even bigger tower. It's because this is how we're going to finance the Transbay Terminal. Period.

Terrible reason to build a highrise. Thanks, kid, for at least raising the issue.

by Amanda Witherell

The Commonwealth Club is doing a thorough wash of water issues this month with their Cool Clear Water lecture series. Tonight they hosted the SFPUC's general manager, Susan Leal. Besides telling us that the whole banning bottled water thing was her idea, not Mayor Newsom's, who's taking some lovely credit for it, she also gave us the run down on the PUC's massive overhaul of our water system.

For the low, low price of $4.3 billion we're getting...

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom was on Forum this morning. Although Michael Krasny was easy on him -- not one tough question -- a few choice tidbits came out. One of my faves, when Krasny asked him about the fall wifi ballot initiative:

"There are 200,000 people in the city who don't have a computer or access to the internet at home." His wifi plan, he insists, will addres the digital divide.

But Mr. Mayor: The wifi contract with Earthlink and Google isn't going to give 200,000 people computers. Not even close. And many of those residents live above the second floor of a building (say, in the Tenderloin), where wifi won't reach. This isn't a digital-divide issue; if that was Newsom's concern, he'd talk about fiber to the door, more community access to computers -- and municipal wireless, which would be run as a public service, not for private profit.

I'd like to think Newsom is just dumb and doesn't get it. I'm afraid he understands it all too well, and has simply decided to cast his lot with private partners who will offer a crappy service that will benefit only those who want to pay for a premium version.

Meanwhile, he says he doesn't care what the supes do: If the board rejects the Earthlink/Google deal, "we'll find away around it."

Since I think Newsom's measure is going to go down to defeat this fall, maybe the progressives should plan on putting a municipal broadband measure on the June, 2008 ballot. Let's do it right.

By Tim Redmond

... who called into Forum to complain that San Francisco isn't friendly enough to the film industry? Poor Robert -- he told Newsom that he decided to make his latest movie in Napa and L.A. because San Francisco wouldn't give him a $3 million "rebate."

Jesus. And Newsom says the city "has to do better." Better at what -- giving money away to rich film directors?

by Amanda Witherell

The New York Times is reporting problems with the tidal power technology being field tested in the East River. Looks like the underwater windmills couldn't hack a current that sheared off the tips of the blades, but optimists from Verdant, the start-up company that owns the project, say that's what field testing is all about. While several permits have been issued to the more tidally blessed coastal areas in North America, Verdant is the only company to actually deploy some of the much talked about technology to see if it works.

The SFPUC, in a strange partnership with PG&E, is exploring similar technology to harness tidal power in the Bay. But last night I overheard the PUC's general manager, Susan Leal, say they were still looking into it, but she wasn't enthusiastic about anything yet. She said she'd visited the East River project and "wasn't impressed."

by Amanda Witherell

The real smokescreen is the one PG&E is puffing in the Potrero and Bayview neighborhoods. This is the flier their bogus front group mailed out last week. PG&E is claiming the neighborhood can't handle any more pollution -- which is true -- but at the same time, the corporation is mishandling the clean-up of their toxic Hunter's Point power plant, which was shuttered in 2006.

by Amanda Witherell

In fine, self-aggrandizing form PG&E just issued this press release congratulating themselves for having such a great website.

Normally, I wouldn't notice such trivialities if it weren't for the recent gaffe with their other website, which didn't work...but does now!

Looks like someone over there at PG&E reads the Guardian!

Photo by Robert Altman from www.altmanphoto.com
By Steven T. Jones
Sunshine activist Kimo Crossman made an excellent point in an e-mail he blasted out this morning, citing a story in the New York Times that illustrates how mayors are usually held accountable for how they spend their days -- and how our Mayor Gavin Newsom isn't.
The story was about how Mayor Rudy Giuliani spent his time after 9-11 and whether it justifies his recent statements about spending more time at Ground Zero than many rescue workers, many of whom now suffer from debilitating respiratory problems as a result of their work, and the failure of Giuliani to properly safeguard their health.
Here in SF, Newsom has been repeatedly criticized by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (which, unfortunately, has no enforcement powers) for failing to disclose his complete public schedule, which most days lists a couple events at most. Today is a good example, with the mayor's schedule listing only "Mayor Newsom will be conducting meeting in City Hall." Wow, that's helpful.
Compare that to the detail and specificity for the mayor of New York, and the mayors of many big cities, and you'll get some insights into how Newsom feels about public accountability.

By Sarah Phelan

George "Naked Yoga Guy" Davis started to take off his clothes the minute he filed for the Mayor’s Race, but last night he gave us the full scoop, beginning with the apron he wore during the mayoral debate that featured a full frontal shot of Michelangelo’s David, then getting down to his birthday suit inside City Hall around 7 PM, outside R. 200, which is the Mayor’s Office. Only this time, he struck a pose in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, of course, was nowhere to be seen, having been whisked off hours earlier, presumably through a side door, since no one saw him leave the building. It was, for sure, a handy escape, since that way Newsom didn't have to face Davis' body, or other naked truths like the unflattering realities about Gavin's San Francisco that emerged from the statements made by the eleven mayoral candidates who did show up outside City Hall. Lke the inimitable h.brown.

Blogger H. Brown: “The city is being run as a developmental jewel for rich people.”

Or the words of former D7 supervisor Tony Hall.

“The Mayor is not representing people but special interests, his high dollar donors. The City is being sold to highest donors piece by piece, whether its Hunters Point Shipyard, Candlestick Point, Laguna or Harding Park.”

Then there was Juvenile Probation program manager Lonnie Holmes:

“I’m a working class person looking for working class solutions. You will get more demonstration and less conversation out of a Holmes administration.”

By G.W. Schulz

Just received early word that in-your-face antitrust lawyer and local swell Joe Alioto will be filing a gargantuan class-action suit tomorrow in federal court against some of the largest players in the global oil racket accusing them of fixing gasoline prices and destroying documents that showed evidence of the collusion.

The defendants will include Shell Oil Company, Chevron Corporation and Saudi Refining, Inc. and the suit alleges that they artificially increased the price of gasoline for more than 20 gas stations throughout California, whose owners are acting as the plaintiffs, by 50 to 60 percent. "Plaintiffs paid significantly higher wholesale prices for branded gasoline when the price of crude oil fell," a press announcement reads.

The suit will state that the defendants formed two companies in a joint venture in 1998, Equilon and Motiva, the former a partnership between Shell and Saudi Refining and the latter made up of Shell and Texaco. Both refine and distribute wholesale gasoline and other fuels.

Alioto represented local businessman and former political consultant Clint Reilly in his antitrust suit against MediaNews Group and the Hearst Corp. after the two announced a massive investment scheme that enabled MediaNews to last year buy up several Bay Area daily newspapers with $300 million from Hearst. The suit was settled earlier this year with mixed reviews.

The latest Big Oil suit will officially be announced tomorrow on the federal courthouse steps in San Francisco at 2 p.m., 450 Golden Gate Ave.

by Amanda Witherell

Pardon my ninth grade Spanish, but it looks like PG&E's having a little fiesta at Limon this Wednesday. Last time I ate there it seemed thick with hipsters, not Latinos, but greenwashing is equal opportunity, non? If you can't get into the event, at the very least the protesting should be bueno! Espero verles alla!

By Tim Redmond

I can think of a lot of people I'd like to indict for conspiracy to commit terrible crimes in the period of time that we now call "the Sixties." Henry Kissinger would be near the top of my list. But I had kind of thought the country was ready to put that all behind us .... and then I read this. And I just keep shaking my head.

by Amanda Witherell

OK, who read the NY Times article about wikiscanner, the new website that makes it possible to track who's editing Wikipedia entries?

Very interesting. We, of course, checked to see if our neighbors over at PG&E happened to be editing Wikipedia entries, and if so, which ones.

Heck yeah. Looks like someone over there has made it a regular hobby. Everything from solar power to -- ha ha -- pubic lice.

The site takes a little savoir faire to navigate, but if you put in the name of a company you're curious about their IP addresses will come up. Then hit the little [wp] and it will list the entries that particular IP address edited. Then if you hit the [diff] it will show you exactly how they were edited.

There are some real gems from the minds of some PG&E employees -- I had no idea that Robert Novak is also known as the "Douche Bag of Liberty." Or that reality TV star Heidi Montag has a thing for Gremlins after midnight and that's why she's hot for Spencer Pratt.

Now, you could draw a lot of speculations from all of this. Here's one: PG&E employees have too much time on their hands. Remember that when PG&E is making claims that the city could never meet or beat its electricity prices.

Who knows -- maybe the boss said to make sure our company and all the shitty things we do looks good on Wikipedia, but clearly this person has other interests and is perhaps more of a sportsfan than a solar energy proponent.

The California High Speed Rail Authority will hold a hearing in San Francisco City Hall tomorrow (Thursday/23) at 4 p.m. to take public input on the study of two possible Bay Area alignments for the high-speed rail line, the first of six such meetings in Northern California. At issue is whether the line coming from the Central Valley should go over Pacheco Pass or Altamount Pass, and both options have large and vocal constituencies, so it should be a tough call. You can do your homework here before weighing in.
The CHSRA ended up getting about $20 million in the just-approved state budget, although it's possible that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, as we've reported, has been the project's biggest obstacle) could still line-item veto the expenditure. But the $10 billion high speed rail bond measure is still on the November '08 ballot, the politics of which make the Bay Area alignment decision a crucial one for the CHSRA. So come weigh in on a project that is crucial to addressing global warming, air quality, and freeway and airport congestion and expansion over the coming decades.

Livable City executive director Tom Radulovich has asked the city Elections Department to remove the controversial pro-car measure Prop. H from the fall ballot after discovering a fairly significant misstatement of city law in the ballot summary that its downtown advocates circulated to get on the ballot. The measure, funded by Republican Don Fisher and condo developer WebCor, invalidates most city parking policies and drastically expands people's rights to build parking spots.
The summary, prepared by the City Attorney's Office, said current law allows at least one parking spot for every four housing units in the downtown districts and up to one spot for every three units. But as Radulovich's letter (which follows) indicates, city law actually allows up to one parking spot per unit in downtown residential zones and two spots for every three units in the commercial C-3 zone downtown.
Guardian phone calls to the City Attorney Office, Elections Department, and Prop. H advocate Jim Maxwell have not yet been returned.
Political consultant Jim Stearns, who is running the campaign against Prop. H, told us state law requires the city to remove the measure. He cited the precedent of City Attorney Dennis Herrera last year invalidating a successful referendum drive challenging the creation of the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment area because those circulating petition didn't carry with them the complete plan, only the ordinance that approved it. If the city doesn't remove the measure, Stearns said opponents will seek a court injunction doing so.

By Artist General:

A few months ago we profiled an Iraqi journalist named Omar Fekeiki, who escaped Baghdad to attend j-school at UC Berkeley, with the hope of returning to Iraq to be with his family and start his own newspaper.

Today the Christian Science Monitor ran their own profile of Fekeiki. It's a great update on the young journalist and the challenges of his summer internship at the Washington Post.

Some might suggest that reading reports from the city’s budget analyst over tumblers of well bourbon at Mission Bar is a little pathetic. They’re right, but the damn things are so often full of such great little stories, we can’t help it. And they're not available on the city’s Web site; you have to request and obtain them from the board clerk’s office, leading us to wonder how many people actually read them.

San Francisco's longtime Budget Analyst Harvey Rose reviewed more than two-dozen union contracts for city workers passed this year by the Board of Supervisors. You’re gonna love what we found in the police union’s new agreement with the city.

San Francisco police officers don’t like living inside city limits, because they say it’s too expensive. Cops do fairly well here, and as we reported awhile back, Gary Delagnes, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, even anticipates that his union’s rank-and-file will be the highest paid in the nation by 2011.

But that’s not enough to keep officers from escaping to the ‘burbs, which would pose a serious logistical problem if a major natural disaster occurred and emergency personnel couldn’t cross damaged bridges back into the city fast enough. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi contended earlier this month that 75 percent of the force lives outside the city, and he wants more recruitment efforts to take place within the heart of San Francisco. An equally startling number of firefighters live elsewhere, too.

So the city of San Francisco will be handing $20,000 checks to officers as a down payment on a home in the city if they move back. It’s actually a “loan,” but it doesn't have to be paid back if the recipient lives in the home for at least five years. If the cop is a renter, they can receive $5,000 for "relocation-related expenses."

By Tim Redmond

The latest installment in the San Francisco Chronicle's war on the homeless is pretty insane. According to C.W. Nevius, the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council's recycling station is part of the problem and perhaps ought to be shut down.

Think about this for a second: Homeless people have had their general assistance and SSI benefits cut repeatedly. G.A., thanks to Care not Cash, is down to almost nothing. So how are these folks supposed to eat (much less ever find a place to live)?

Some of them do a bit of real work: They go around town and collect bottles and cans, some of which would otherwise be unsightly garbage. Some of the cans and bottles also came out of people's blue bins, and would otherwise by recycled (for money) by the private garbage company, which is quite profitable anyway; I'm not going to cry about that sort of "theft."

So these folks haul the bottles to the recycling center and get a few bucks, which, as the Chron even admits, often goes immediately for (imagine this!) food. I bet some of the remaining money sometimes goes for booze or drugs. (Some of my remaiming money every week goes for booze, too, and I know a few highly upstanding citizens who spend some of their disposable cash on the ol' Evil Weed. I don't think this signals the imminent decline of society.)

Here's my question: What would the opponents of the HANC recycling center do -- deny the can-collectors their money? Because here's what would happen: More aggressive panhandling. More petty theft. Car windows broken and stereos stolen. Bicycles stolen. That sort of thing.

As long as we can't provide people with a decent place to live in this rich city, some will sleep outdoors, including in the park. And they're going to find a way to get some cash every day. I think the current situation is a lot better than many of the available alternatives.

A few weeks ago, we told you the story of Kevin Scott Noah, a carpenter who fell to his death while working on the Golden Gate Bridge in 2002. Occupational safety officials fined his employer, a joint venture known as Shimmick-Obayashi, $26,000 for a handful of alleged violations.

But four years later on appeal, an administrative judge tossed every single one of the fines arguing that a bizarre technicality meant Shimmick-Obayashi wasn’t responsible for the accident. Cal/OSHA, the judge concluded, hadn’t printed the full legal name of the company on the citations, so the contractor didn’t have to pay a dime.

Apparently, however, state auditors don’t give a lick what the company’s full legal name is – they know that using the shorter but clearly decipherable “Shimmick-Obayashi” should be enough, according to the report linked above. So while one bureaucracy can waste thousands completing an investigation that’s dismissed on a single flimsy claim four years after the fact, another can summarize what that same firm is earning in contract change orders and simply refer to them as “Shimmick-Obayashi” without anyone declaring the audit invalid.

By the way, between April and June alone, the Shimmick-Obayashi joint venture (not their full legal name, your honor) earned $212,000 in contract change orders. Earlier we reported that Shimmick-Obayashi would likely earn a total of $30 million more to help retrofit the Golden Gate Bridge than authorities originally anticipated. The initial contract was for $122 million.

Here's a lovely bit of political defeatism, courtesy of Calitics.

(UPDATE 5:30PM: A concerned reader just informed us that you can see Craig's creepy mug shot, along with a photo of the pretty yummy decoy cop here. No fair if the cops are that cute!)

Except that I’m completely against them, I have nothing against gay Republicans: we’re all driven by the engines of hypocrisy in one form or other – and accepting yourself is a lifelong journey, incredibly difficult for some. We are everywhere, darnit. (For a great history of closeted Republicans, click here.) So I didn’t jump to posting about the Larry Craig scandal until I got a few facts, er, straight – like his heinous record of voting against equal rights (looks like, for once, Perez freaking Hilton did his homework, and there’s a solid little encapsulation here. You can look up Larry Craig’s individual Senate votes here.) Plus, I was awfully busy celebrating Alberto Gonzales's resignation. Not even this could take that away from me.

"Wide stance."

I also wanted to read the giant expose that the Idaho Statesman was hyping today. Even though Roll Call broke the story of the three-term senator from Idaho who had been arrested for cruising the bathrooms of a Minnesota airport, the Statesman had been investigating allegations of Craig’s homosexuality for months – and there are portions of a revealing interview with the Senator (and, alas, his poor wife) included, where the Senator actually keeps saying “Jiminy!” A LOT.

By Tim Redmond

It's no surprise that Earthlink has backed out of its deal to provide free wi-fi in San Francisco; we predicted this weeks ago.

What's annoying is that the mayor is trying to blame the supervisors for delaying the contract. What -- they should have rushed to approve it even as the prime vendor was telling the rest of the world that it wasn't interested in this line of business any more? The supes should have done no due diligence and just gone along with what the mayor wanted?

Newsom's big election-year initiative has just burned down, and he's looking for a scapegoat. It's your own fault, My. Mayor; it was a bad deal from day one.

Io-wha??? In a turn of events strange enough to cause me to spit out my chocolate croissant in disbelief this morning, same-sex marriage is now legal in Iowa.

I shit you not.

Well, actually, it turns out that it was officially legal for only two hours -- from 9am-11am. A judge in Polk County struck down Iowa's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act -- otherwise known as "Io-we hate gays" -- this morning, saying it violated the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection of six gay couples involved in the case, but then put the ruling on hold two hours later.

Still, a few couples got their legal license applications in on time and tied the knot. And it's awfully hard to undo such things legally once they're accomplished in such a way. (Our Winter of Love couples' weddings were more easily declared invalid because they hadn't participated in a legal case beforehand).

Gayer than we thought

"This is it. We're married. I love you," said Sean Fritz to Tim McQuillan, according to the AP, after they got hitched -- one of the lucky couple to have applied in time (and skillfully worked their way around the typical three-day waiting period.)

Who knows what's gonna happen -- but I can't stop singing "Iowa Stubborn" from Corn State-based musical The Music Man in my head: "You really ought to give Iowa a try....."

by Sarah Phelan

While apparently not available for debating, Gavin has been spotted in City Hall like at this Aug. 14 event where he posed with a pretty unidentified brunette.

The day after former supervisor Tony Hall dropped out of the mayoral race, he told me that in the three weeks that
has passed since he filed to run, his campaign offered to meet Newsom, "in any format to have an intelligent informed debate," but to no avail.

The Guardian has offered to sponsor a debate, but so far Newsom's camp has not replied to our request.

Newsom's campaign manager Eric Jaye was quoted in today's Chronicle as saying Newsom will participate in debates with the other candidates-- a promise Jaye also made to us three weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Hall denies that his decision to drop out was connected to a City's Ethics Commission investigation into allegations that he misused thousands of dollars in contributions to his 2004 re-election campaign, when he was District 7 supervisor.

By Tim Redmond

The mayor now says he's going to seek another private partner to build a wi-fi network in the city. Calls, he says, are pouring in..

So here we go again.