The Guardian introduces a new weekly advice column from Nathan Ballard, press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom. We hope you enjoy his insights as much as we always have.

Dear Nate:

Times are tough in San Francisco for a lot of people, but my life seems to be bottoming out these days. My good city job just got eliminated, the after school program my kids love was cut, my elderly grandmother just lost her home health nurse, and the police still have no idea who murdered my husband last year. He was even shot right in front of one of those crime cameras. What should I do?

Desperate for Help

Dear Dessie:

I reject the premise of your question. Things are going great in San Francisco, particularly under this mayor's strong leadership. But we feel your pain, which seems to stem from the Board of Supervisors refusing to give the Police Department more money or the authority to constantly monitor those cameras. Sup. Aaron Peskin is the reason your husband's killer hasn't been caught. He may actually be the murderer.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I was thinking about going into politics. Do you have any advice for someone considering running for office?

Budding Candidate

Dear Bud:

As my boss has repeatedly said, being mayor is the toughest and most thankless job in the world. He's constantly dealing with uppity supervisors and complaining constituents, at least when he's in town. And if you're one of those spineless, whiny so-called progressives, my advice is to just do something else. Get a real job, something in the private sector. But if you share Mayor Newsom's belief in building a better San Francisco with more public-private partnerships — and you've got a lot of rich friends — I say go for it. But make sure you hire the best advisers by calling Storefront Political Media and Earned Media. We — , er, uh, I mean they really know what they're doing.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I'm new to San Francisco and trying to understand the political dynamics here. Is the central struggle really between progressives and moderates? Those are the two labels I hear the most, but it doesn't make much sense to me. What about liberal vs. conservative?

Political Science Student

Dear Poli-Sci:

I reject the label progressive, and so does the San Francisco Chronicle now that we convinced them to. So actually the central struggle in this town is between the radical and unrealistic ultra-liberals and moderates like Gavin Newsom. The mayor can be a fiscal conservative when he needs to be, and he's liberal on social issues, which makes him a moderate and therefore the voice of reason. He could even be a progressive on some issues, if there were such a thing as a progressive, which there's not. But he's never ultra-anything, because that would make him crazy, which he also isn't. Is that clear?

Nate

A special Guardian endorsement

POTUS here he comes!

California's a tough place. It's a state of clashing values — of coastal liberals who want good public services, environmental protection, and gay marriage and central valley conservatives who want nothing of the sort. It's run by a fractious, divisive legislature that desperately needs a firm hand. It's a state so big and complex that it has defied the abilities of generations of talented politicians, from Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian to Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And yet, we refuse to give up on the Golden State. It's been the Guardian's home since 1966, the place where we launched what would be the first alternative paper on the West Coast. It's a place with endless possibilities, from sunshine to public power to tax reform, and we can't risk its future on another worthless, wimpy chief executive.

That's why we're taking the unusual step of announcing an early endorsement for governor. We're backing the only candidate strong enough, smart enough, sober enough, and secure enough in his own self worth and image to take on the Sisyphean task of running California. Today, we're endorsing Gavin Newsom.

The mayor of San Francisco may look like a lightweight fop, but that's unfair — we know him better. This is a young man who grew up cleaning toilets then went on to found his own successful business, using nothing but the wealth and connections of a billionaire family friend to help him. A man who has never spent a day in his life without comfortable surroundings yet developed a remarkable empathy for the less fortunate, and capitalized on their misery to promote his career. A man who travels the world in the company of movies stars and brilliant entrepreneurs, fearlessly promoting his home town while the rest of the whiney little twerps at City Hall just sit in committee meetings and bitch.

Losers.

Newsom's platform is perfect for this state, at this time. He supports marriage; after all, he's done it twice himself. He's even gotten involved in the marriages of close friends and advisors! And he thinks the rest of us, no matter what our sexual proclivities, should have the right to be miserable too.

Newsom talks not just of change, but of "gigantic order-of-magnitude change." He thinks we should all come together to solve the state's problems instead of pointing fingers of blame — and isn't that just the sweetest?

Editor's Notes by Tim Redmond

It was hard in the good old days. Back when we were young and San Francisco was cheap and I was really cool with my long hair and motorcycle and stuff. You could rent an apartment for $200 a month, and even though we weren't making much money in those days, there was plenty left over for drugs.

Back then, a guy like me would never have respected a politician like Gavin Newsom. You know: Party pooper. High-society twit. He even blamed his drinking for his tawdry affairs; we always though our tawdry affairs were the best reason for our drinking. And we never went into rehab. How, like, Betty Ford can you be?

But now I'm older and have a family and take cholesterol medication and I've come to realize how much I like Gavin Newsom. I mean, I don't like him, not all Beth Spotswood or anything, but he's growing on me.

I remember when he was running for reelection, and he came down to the Guardian to talk to us, and I asked him why he should get another term when the city was so eminently fucked up, and he said: "Gee, why did I even bother to get up this morning?"

That's the kind of question you'd never hear Jerry Brown or John Garamendi ask. They know why they got up this morning; they are past the time of wonder and self-doubt.

Old farts is what they are.

So this week we endorse Gavin — Our Mayor — for governor of California. You won't read that in SF Weekly — they don't even do endorsements, pathetic little shits.

In other news, I'm happy to announce that the Guardian has settled its lawsuit with SF Weekly and Village Voice Media.

Story and photos by Steven T. Jones

A motley crew of colorful fools paraded through the Financial District this afternoon for the annual St. Stupid’s Day Parade. Who? Why, St. Stupid, who one fool with a megaphone described as the “two-dimensional scapegoat brought to you by the First Church of the Last Laugh.”

What, haven’t heard of that church either? What are you, stupid? Said fool told the hundreds in attendance that it’s the largest and oldest religion in the world, the one to which all humans are members and from whence every other church is derived. It is the church to which all and nothing is sacred.

By Tim Redmond

I thought this was an April Fool's joke at first, too, but it's not: Former Sup. Ed Jew is asking for a reduced sentence in his extortion case because of brain damange

Now, before you go all bananas about this, keep in mind that it's fairly common in high-stakes capital cases for defense lawyers to argue -- often correctly -- that their clients' violent behavior was caused in part by organic brain damage. Arguing that someone has diminished capacity because of head trauma, and that his medical condition should be a factor in his sentence, is a perfectly legitimate legal strategy.

But what I love about this story is that Stu Hanlon, a brilliant defense lawyer, is arguing that Jew's brain damage was exactly what made him so popular and got him elected:

“His social naivete and exuberance likely endeared him to people initially, helping him to become supervisor, but ultimately contributed to his downfall when more prudent judgment and impulse control were necessary.”

In other words: People with brain damage make excellent politicians. Wow, that explains a lot.

By Tim Redmond

So Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, with the help of the Republicans, managed to get a bill through committee that would force San Francisco to restore JROTC. It's astonishing to me that a San Francisco representative, and a former supervisor who understands why local control is often important to San Francisco, would try to get the state to override a local school board policy decision. I'm totally against JROTC in the public schools, but however you feel about it, letting the state dictate that kind of policy for a local school board is a dangerous precedent.

And to make things worse, she read what looked like a prepared speech blaming the situation on "renegade" SF school board members. "Renegade?" Because local elected officials voted their conscience on a tough issue?

I emailed Ma to get an explanation, but according to her email auto-response, this great maker of educational policy is on "vaction." (Sic). I'll let you know if I hear any more.

By Steven T. Jones

Yesterday's joint announcement of a wage concession deal between the Mayor's Office and Service Employees International Union Local 1021 -- the largest union of city employees -- included few details, and sources on both sides have been reluctant to give out much information until the rank-and-file have the chance to review it (they say more details could be forthcoming on the union's website by tonight).

“The goal of this tentative agreement is to protect vital services for San Franciscans, minimize layoffs to employees, preserve the integrity of the collective bargaining agreement, and assist the City with its economic recovery,” read the brief joint public statement.

The Chronicle's Marisa Lagos got a bit more, with unnamed sources telling her the union has agreed to forgo $40 million in promised pay increases over the next 16 months, including raises that were set to kick in this Saturday. While the promise to "minimize layoffs" was in there, the real question is how to do that, including whether Mayor Gavin Newsom will cooperate with the desire by labor and the left for a package of local tax measures later this year.

Given this week's report predicting unprecedented budget deficits for each of the next three years -- reaching a staggering $750 million by 2011 -- there is growing recognition that service cuts alone simply will not solve this city's fiscal crisis.

By Marke B.

Lat night, I attended the annual gala for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign (or IGLHRC) -- last year's gala feted Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and this one, while considerably smaller, was also mega-inspiring. It was held mostly to honor Helem, an incredible and youthful gay rights organization based in Lebanon, but it also served as an introduction to IGLHRC's new Executive Director, Cary Alan Johnson. The intensely charismatic Johnson spoke of how he had just visited nine starving gay prisoners in Senegal, convicted of "engaging in acts against the order of nature" and ordered to serve eight years -- the men in fact had simply gathered at an apartment to discuss AIDS education (and were therefore also convicted of conspiracy.)

He also spoke about how IGLHRC's small ground team in Uganda was desperate to combat a huge new wave of creepy American religious right extremists (totally creepy -- one horrid group of them is called "Extreme Prophetic Ministry!"), who were openly and vocally attacking Ugandan LGBTs and insisting they could be "cured." Johnson also described IGLHRC's role in assisting all the people who had been beaten senseless in the backlash against South Africa's recent adoption of same-sex marriage laws.

The speech was pretty rousing and I was soon wiping my eyes on the bf's sleeve as the emotions poured out for my persecuted peeps around the globe. Would there ever be any bright spots in the seemingly eternal struggle to get other people to fucking mind their own goshdarned business?

By Tim Redmond

Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Sophie Maxwell are pushing a massive 107,000-square-foot Lowe's home improvement store for the old Goodman Lumber site on Bayshore Boulevard.

And it's still a bad idea.

Big-box retail is the opposite of sustainable economics and progressive city planning. I know, we're in a recession and we need any jobs we can get, but low-wage employment in a chain store that sucks all its revenue out of town every night isn't going to help us get out of this hole.

The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma. By Molly Freedenberg

One of my favorites: Hollis getting ready for the Cheese Puffs' big show opening for Richard Cheese at Bimbo's last year. The Derailleurs had their first big show immediately afterwards.

Wow! There have been lots of changes since we last updated about Hollis. For those who haven't been keeping up with the Hollis blogs, she's home! As in: settled into a private room at our very own St. Luke's, right here in the Mission. Her room is decorated with photos of her and her friends, including a giant poster at the foot of her bed featuring Hollis, Eliza (who's maintaining the friendsofhollis blog), and their mutual friend Shannon (who helped co-found the Sprockettes with Eliza before she co-founded the Derailleurs with Hollis). Her mom, Diane, is still in town and spending nearly every second of every day at her side (with a sadly dinky blanket, I must add.) Hollis also is getting tons of visitors - so many that Eliza is working on posting an online schedule for reference and planning.

Hollis is still in a coma, but her condition continues to improve slooooowly. (Contrary to what soap operas would have us believe, the process of coming out of a coma is incredibly gradual.) She is making verbal sounds, which we can hear thanks to a small purple device attached to her tracheotomy tube that helps air flow over her vocal chords (instead of right out the tube). She occasionally opens both eyes, which seem to be tracking (though not exactly seeing). And some friends report that Hollis is responding to them directly - whether turning her head towards a book being read to her, or seeming to play thumb wars with Eliza. As of yesterday, she also seemed to be relaxing - letting go of the curled-up tension she's had on her right side (especially her hand and arm) since the accident.

The SF Examiner and the Chronicle continue to beat the anti-immigrant drum, when it comes to mocking, downplaying or distorting the unconstitutional impact on children of San Francisco’s sanctuary policy.

So it may come as a surprise to learn that under the new policy direction that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered last summer, just as he was announcing his gubernatorial run, San Francisco does nothing to accord due process to undocumented children that are charged with felonies by local law enforcement officials.

Now, if you ask the Mayor’s Office, if the sanctuary policy accords due process to juvenile youth, you’ll get, “Yes, the City Attorney vetted it.”
That is not an answer. It’s the giant sucking sound of mayoral advisers passing the buck.

Now, as Sup. David Campos points out, the City Attorney provides legal advice—what the law is, its parameters, its implications—not policy calls.

Campos reiterated that point this week, when he and seven other members of Board of Supervisors voted to pass a resolution urging the board to adopt the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which supports due process for youth. (You can watch the video of that meeting here. Look for item 17.)

Players: Michael "Kennedy" Cassidy, Gus Murad and Jean-Paul Samaha (the three men on the right) party together at Murad's wedding in Morocco. Photo by Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal.

By Tim Redmind

The Chron's Seth Rosenfeld continues to cover the controversy over the demolition of the Little House on Russian Hill, and he'd advanced the story a few notches. But the headline -- "cracks in bureaucracy doomed historic house" -- makes it sound as if this whole episode were just a matter of screw-ups and incompetance. As opposed to, for example, systemic corruption in the Department of City Planning and Department of Building Inspection.

Read through Rosenfeld's article, and our piece, by Rebecca Bowe, and the notion that all of this happened by accident -- that somehow, simple bureaucratic messups allowed two very influential players in the local political scene to pull off what should have been an illegal demolition -- strains credibility. To say the least.

So far, nobody has come up with a smoking gun that links anyone at City Planning or DBI, or either of the developers, to any violation of law. And that's probably the way it will stay. Shady stuff happens all the time in the world of San Francisco real-estate development, and some of it's perfectly legal, and even when it isn't, nobody ever seems to go to jail.

No -- it's just business as usual at CIty Planning and DBI. As Charles Marsteller, former head of Common Cause, told us:

"It was just a put-on by some insiders in City Hall working the network that they normally work," Marsteller says. "And it shouldn't have happened."

By Marke B.

Today came word that six men had been shot for being gay in Baghdad's Sadr City -- two last Thursday and four earlier, their bodies unearthed on March 25 with signs reading "pervert" pinned to their chests. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called for a "crackdown" on gays. "Sermons condemning homosexuality were read at the last two Friday prayer gatherings in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum of some 2 million people," according to Reuters

"Two young men were killed on Thursday. They were sexual deviants. Their tribes killed them to restore their family honor," a Sadr City official who declined to be named said.

"This (homosexuality) has spread because of the absence of the Mehdi Army, the spread of sexual films and satellite television and a lack of government surveillance," said the office's Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gharawi, a Shi'ite cleric.

According to an eyewitness, a cafe known for being a gay hangout was also burned down.

"Homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq," said our own State Department (specifically, John Fleming, the public affairs officer for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs) last Thursday when confronted by an international outcry over the alleged possibility of "execution in batches" of gays imprisoned for "moral crimes" there.

By Rebecca Bowe

Last Friday, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi declared 2009 the “make-or-break year” for San Francisco’s ambitious Community Choice Aggregation program. Also known as Clean Power SF, the program would establish the city and county as an electricity purchaser for residents and businesses currently served by PG&E, and put S.F. on track for achieving 50 percent renewable power generation. At an April 3 LAFCo (Local Agency Formation Commission) meeting, it was announced that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has agreed to sit down with LAFCo for a meeting about CCA for the first time ever -- a sign that things could actually start moving forward.

The process of getting Clean Power SF off the ground has been fraught with delay, in part because the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission -- which is tasked with implementing the program -- dropped the ball on a series of deadlines. During the last couple monthly meetings, LAFCo, which is charged with overseeing CCA implementation, has vented frustration about the feet dragging at the PUC and questioned the agency’s commitment to the effort. However, the tone shifted some at the April 3 meeting.

CCA director Michael Campbell, who was hired by the SFPUC, noted that the city agency is getting back on schedule -- and announced the launch of a new Web site. Two new LAFCo staff positions were approved recently by the Board of Supervisors, providing further momentum.

A graph on the Mayor's Office's newly launched website seeks to break it all down.

Text by Sarah Phelan

So, finally, the Mayor’s Office has launched a website to track stimpack dollars that are coming to San Francisco based on census data (formula funding), or that can be competed for locally.

So far the newly launched website breaks down the dollars by the following categories: public safety, environment, education, housing, health and human services and transportation. It's a good start.

What the site does not do is break down the dollars according to whether they are going to create green collar jobs. Such jobs been defined by Van Jones, Obama''s new Green Collar czar, as, " a family-supporting, career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality."

I realize it’s early days and the city may truly not have a handle on this crucial date yet, and I'm trying to practice what Jones, who likes metaphors involving ships, (the Amistad, the Titanic, and Noah's Ark all get invoked in Jones The Green Collar Economy,) calls "the Noah principles.

These five principles can be summed up thus: "fewer issues, more solutions; fewer demands, more goals; fewer targets, more partners; less accusation, more confession; and less cheap patriotism, more deep patriotism."

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori conducted a "dirty war" against Shining Path guerillas and their supporters. Photo by Agence-France Press.

By Steven T. Jones

Nobody is above the law, not even heads-of-state. That’s the important message from today’s sentencing of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison for the murders, kidnapping, and other official excesses that he ordered during his long battle against leftist rebels.

And it’s a message that should send a chill down the spines of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of their murderous, torturing regime, which is already being targeted by the same Spanish court that had Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet arrested on similar charges (although Pinochet later slipped the loose, much to the shame of the US and British governments).

San Francisco-based human rights group The Center for Justice and Accountability helped with Fujimori’s prosecution and issued a statement that included this quote from executive director Pamela Merchant: "The Supreme Court of Peru's conviction of former President Alberto Fujimori is an extraordinary example of the rule of law prevailing over the rule of men. Peru, a young and fragile democracy recovering from years of violence, sets an important example for all nations: a real democracy is only possible where no one is above the law and the victims can achieve justice. We applaud today's ruling and the hope it brings to thousands of victims and their representatives working to seek justice."

By Rebecca Bowe

On an evening in late January, hundreds of volunteers hit the streets of San Francisco to complete the 2009 Homeless Count, a biennial point-in-time head count of homeless persons in the city. The count is required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for all jurisdictions receiving federal funding to provide housing and services for the homeless. To do it, city staffers from various departments team up with volunteers to go out into city streets, emergency shelters, drop-in centers, jails and hospitals to take a tally of how many homeless people they encounter.

In the weeks leading up to it, the Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a press release announcing that he was working with the city’s Human Services Agency to conduct the point-in-time count. “Having an accurate count of our homeless community is essential in determining the effectiveness of our homeless outreach efforts," Newsom said in a statement. “We’ve got a long way to go toward ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco, but this count will help us to continue in the right direction."

We called the Mayor’s Office of Communications in January and asked them to keep us in the loop when the results of the homeless count were released. Given the tanking economy, home foreclosures, and anecdotal accounts of rising homelessness, we were interested to see what this survey might reveal. Yet after submitting a series of requests to the MOC earlier this week for the homeless count results, we were finally told: “There has not been a report that has been released.”

Really? How strange. Because Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness later forwarded us a document from the city titled “2009 Homeless Count: Executive Summary,” featuring an introduction, survey methods, homeless count results, and analysis. Looks like a report. Sounds like a report. It must be a report!

By Steven T. Jones

OK, things are starting to get ridiculous! For years, we’ve been warning our readers about the impending Death of Fun in San Francisco, but now the city crackdowns are coming so fast and furious that it’s tough to keep up.

Since our last reports on Bay to Breakers restrictions and threats to go after flash mobs such as the Valentine’s Day pillow fight, police officers have rudely shut down the Flashdance dance party, repeatedly swept through Dolores Party busting people for drinking, and now they’re threatening tickets and arrests for participants in this coming weekend’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event.

Seriously, exactly what law is someone breaking by riding a Big Wheel down the street? Police officials have been unable to tell me, and they say they’ll get back to me about that and their other crackdowns. Meanwhile, they’re still demanding that the How Weird Street Faire come up with almost $10,000 in protection money in advance of the May 10 event.

I know that we have a budget crisis, but are extortion and aggressive ticketing really how we want the SFPD to close its budget gap? Isn’t the right to peacefully assemble one of our bedrock constitutional guarantees? And in a vibrant, colorful city like San Francisco, why is fear trumping fun?

By Tim Redmond

The protests over the latest BART police killing continue, with one activist chased out of a BART Board meeting today after trying to throw red paint on General Manager Dorothy Dugger.

I'm not endorsing paint-throwing (though pies are always fun), but it's clear that the BART protests need to continue, because the BART Board members simply will not accept adequate police oversight unless it's forced on them.

And that's what Assembly Member Tom Ammiano is trying to do. His bill to require civilian oversight for the BART Police will be heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee April 14, 9 am, in the state Capitol Room 126. There needs to be a strong showing of support.

Assmbly member Fiona Ma is on that committee, and is weak on this issue. Call her office before the hearing ((916) 319-2012) and let her know you support the measure.

The BART cops will try to derail this. The BART Board is not on board. This will be up to the rest of us; let's give Ammiano and civilian oversight a show of support.

By Steven T. Jones

If you want to get a real sense of how screwed up this city’s budget priorities are, just look at how the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is looking to close its whopping $129 million budget deficit.

A good chart in the Examiner the other day detailed the proposals, but it didn’t add them, so let me break it down for you: over $30 million in increased Muni fares, $56.4 million in Muni service cuts, and $11 million in higher parking fees. So poor bus riders contribute almost $90 million to the problem and drivers kick in $11 million.

And to make up the difference, Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing to sell off taxi medallions, privatizing a public resource in a way that will enrich and give more power to the cab companies. So the average San Franciscan gets screwed and continues to subsidize the automobiles that clog our roadways – a problem that will only get worse as Muni becomes more expensive and less efficient.

It’s no wonder people are pissed and supervisors are threatening to reject the MTA budget. And the MTA's budget problems are exacerbated by Newsom allowing other city departments -- mostly notably the cops -- to treat the MTA as a piggy bank for solving their own budget gaps. San Francisco is better than this, and Newsom should pay a heavy political price if he continues on this path.

By Tim Redmond

Check out Nancy Pelosi on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. SHe looks pretty bad, has no sense of humor, etc, etc, but here's the fun part:

At one point, Pelosi says that "newspapers" have been calling her, asking for federal TARP bailout money.

Now, I wonder which "newspapers" that might be.

We know Hearst -- in the person of Phil Bronstein -- has met with Pelosi, and that Pelosi has talked about relaxing antitrust rules for newspapers. Did Bronstein or someone else at Hearst also ask for federal money to support the ailing Chron?

I dunno -- Pelosi's press office hasn't called me back to say whether she will identify the "newspapers" that have contacted her. I haven't heard back from Bronstein, either.

I suppose it's not out of the question -- if the taxpayers can bail out AIG and General Motors, why not the San Francisco Chronicle? But would Obama then want to fire the publisher?

By Steven T. Jones

I love the idea of temporarily closing streets to cars and transforming them into open space, a concept known as cicolovia that San Francisco has adopted under the moniker Sunday Streets and which now take place in Portland, Miami and New York City, as well as a host of foreign cities where the idea began many years ago.

Last year, the Guardian heavily promoted the first Sunday Streets events and even defended Mayor Gavin Newsom against attacks from supervisors and business interests for supporting them. This year, the first of six Sunday Streets is coming up on April 26. But after looking through the details of this year’s corporate-sponsored events, I’m having a hard time summoning much enthusiasm for them.

San Francisco is slowly becoming a place where it takes corporate backing just to throw a simple street party, or even to ride your Big Wheel down the street, and where failure to fill out the proper forms and display the sponsors’ logos will get you shut down by the cops.

By Steven T. Jones

Under pressure from the community, the Mayor’s Office, and Sup. Sophie Maxwell, organizers of this Sunday’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event say the San Francisco Police Department has reversed its position and will allow the event to happen as long as organizers promise to apply for permits next year, which they have agreed to do.

“This could be the start of something really cool,” said Tom Price, who has been lobbying City Hall on behalf of the event, whose organizers have reached out to neighbors, rented porta-potties, stressed responsibility, and promised a vigorous cleanup effort.

As we reported yesterday, the SFPD had taken a hard line on this increasingly popular annual event. Capt. John Loftus told organizers, “We will barricade the street and you won't be able to go two feet anywhere on that block. If downtown wants to come up with another solution, fine.”

But downtown apparently intervened. Earlier in the day, I spoke with top mayoral adviser Mike Farrah, who had been working with Price to reach a resolution. “These events are important to San Francisco. I think they are vital to the foundation of our economy, not to mention, they’re fun,” Farrah, who has become something of a City Hall liaison to the Burning Man community, told me. “And I think there’s been an effort to try to be responsible.”

By Deia de Brito

Last year, Florida-based Lennar Corp. broke local ballot funding records at the time when it spent close to $5 million on its campaign to approve Proposition G, giving it the right to develop more than 10,000 homes in southeast San Francisco, and to defeat Proposition F, the alternative measure demanding that half these units be affordable.

Lennar, the Redevelopment Agency, and Mayor Gavin Newsom argued that 50 percent affordability would doom the project. But to win the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Lennar agreed to increase the number of affordable units from the 25 percent it proposed up to 32 percent of the total, along with guarantees of using local union members in the construction.

But in its first residential project under that plan, revealed on Tuesday at the Redevelopment Agency, it proposes building 88 market rate ownership units at the shipyard’s Parcel A, with only 13 are set aside for families earning less than 80 percent of the Bayview’s Area Median Income. That’s less than even the 15 percent required of most projects in San Francisco, and less than half what the company promised San Francisco voters.

Sup. Chris Daly authored Prop. F and warned at the time that Lennar couldn’t be trusted. “It’s not surprising, but it is unfortunate,” Daly said of Lennar’s opening residential project. “They should either live up to their promises or we should kick them out of town.”

By Steven T. Jones

As the deadline approaches for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority to figure out how its massive new Transbay Terminal will accommodate the California High-Speed Rail project, it appears the agency may pursue a two-station solution to the capacity question.

TJPA spokesperson Adam Alberti tells the Guardian that involved agencies are hoping operational adjustments can be made to handle up to eight trains per hour at Transbay, and that the additional four trains per hour that the California High-Speed Rail Authority says it wants might have to stop at the existing 4th and Townsend station.

He said there is a growing consensus against building a second floor of train platforms, which could add $1 billion to the price of the project. The TJPA board needs to land on a plan by May so current contracts can be issued and so regional agencies can come together on a request for about $1 billion in federal stimulus money when the state makes its formal request for federal high-speed rail funding in June.

CHSRA Chair Quentin Kopp continues to question the Transbay Terminal project, saying its schedule and location have been dictated by its bus component and noting that its costs have been creeping ever higher. “This has all the earmarks of San Francisco’s Big Dig.”

Hey, no flies on us! Newsom blocked us from his Twitter -- so we started our own at http://twitter.com/sfbg. If you just can't get enough of that SFBG stuff, Cocopuff, then follow us -- we'll be regularly posting blog and article updates, commentary, and general Bay goings on. We know we're a little twitterlate, but as stoned commie hippies we were way too busy finding black market organic Doritos.

Thanks,
Your SFBG Web Army

By Steven T. Jones

Yesterday’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event showed how a weird, community-based event that draws thousands of people and even has a real element of danger can be remarkably responsible, well-organized, and self-policing, without any help from police or other city officials, who mostly stayed at bay until the event was over.

Nonetheless, as the Examiner reports today (joining the Guardian’s years-long campaign against the Death of Fun), city officials continue to insist on expensive permits and the hiring of too many police officers on overtime for most events, making it increasingly difficult to stage the fun that makes San Francisco what it is.

The next big test is whether the Mayor’s Office can get the SFPD to back off of its demand that the How Weird Street Faire pay almost $10,000 up front. While senior mayoral adviser Mike Farrah has gotten involved with mediating the dispute, the latest word from the SFPD is they want their money by May 1 or else. Organizers say they won’t have the money until the day of the May 10 event when they collect donations.

As Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird organizer Brad Olsen just this morning, “Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope. However, a rainy day or other unforeseen problem would mean that you would be unable to fulfill your financial obligation and that is an inappropriate risk for a City agency. Possibly seeking a loan from another source would be an option.”

Here’s a juicy lead: Seems Lennar is willing and able to give folks who register with the “Lennar family” discounts at Home Depot, Blockbuster, Ace Hardware and Target,

Does that mean Lennar is planning on trying to bring all of those big boxes into D10, home of the Bayview, Hunters Point Shipyard, Viz Valley and Candlestick Point, on the southeast of town?

By Tim Redmond

I can't even send a couple of questions to the executive editor of Village Voice Media without setting off a premature ejaculation.

That's right -- Mike Lacey was attacking my story on how VVM is ducking payment in our lawsuit before I even had the story written. And he even quoted Dire Straits! From 1985! How incredibly hip!

So here's the deal: VVM owes us $20 million and doesn't want to pay.

I email Lacey to get a comment - -which is only fair, and which I have always done, even though most of the time he ignores my questions -- and he responds with this.

The guy's got a thing for "brain vomit," which seems to be his standard comment on anything he doesn't like.

I particularly like the comment about "class bitterness," which works so well these days. And of course, he ducks the point: VVM owes us a bunch of money. If Lacey wanted to wait until after the appeal, he could have posted an appeal bond -- but if he did that, then we'd be guaranteed payment if we won the appeal.

This way, even if we win (which I think we will) he can try to slime away without paying.

Hell of a guy. Hell of a company.

Oh, and by the way: His description of the trial testimony isn't terribly accurate either. You can read the whole history here.

On the point about the building, Bruce and the rent, I have to weigh in since Lacey and his cohorts have been trying to retail this crap for years. In the late 1980s, when office space in the Mission was dirt cheap, the Guardian signed a ten-year lease on a building on Hampshire St. When the lease ran out, the market for office space in the Mission (and all over town) had changed, dramatically. Our rent was going to double, or more; and every place we looked at offered about the same (high) rates.

We figured out that we could buy a building, lease out the space we didn't need, and pay LESS every month than what we would have had to pay to rent, either at our old place or anywhere else. So yes: The rent the Guardian was paying went up after we bought the building. It could have gone up even more, and the cash could have gone to a commercial landlord. Instead, we got a great deal on a building, gained some equity, and have kept our costs LOWER ever since.

Bruce and Jean don't make any money from the Guardian on the building. Anyone who thinks they would try to squeeze their own newspaper for their personal gain is either nuts, doesn't know them, or is just trying to be an asshole.

I suspect Mr. Lacey fits in category three.

John Ross reads at Modern Times

By Tim Redmond

John Ross, the legendary poet, writer and shit-disturber who has been our Mexico City correspondant for years and broken numerous big stories, called me last week to say he’d been knocked around by the SF cops.

Now, that’s nothing new for John -- he has never done well with authority and has been beaten badly by police officers in San Francisco, Mexico City and numerous other locations over the years.

But today, John is 71, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and recovering from surgery and chemotherapy for liver cancer. He’s physically weak and has a hard time walking. He’s certainly no threat to law enforcement.

And somehow, he tells me, he wound up on the wrong side of a violent police confrontation, right on 24th and Valencia.

There was no protest; he wasn’t in the middle of a riot or disturbance, trying to get a story (as he’s done so many times before.) He was walking -- slowly, with a cane -- to a café to buy a bottle of blueberry Odwalla, which he figured was good for his liver.

Read his account after the jump.

By Steven T. Jones

Our post the other day on how Lennar and its allies misrepresented promises to build 32 percent affordability into its 10,500 homes proposed in southeastern San Francisco has earned us indignant calls from the Labor Council and ACORN. But at the end of each of those conversations, my belief that the city is getting a raw deal has only been strengthened.

Sure, these organizations and the city are collectively getting millions of dollars from Lennar. But if construction of affordable housing in the part of town with the lowest income San Franciscans is the concern, as it rightfully should be, it’s clear that Lennar has gotten one helluva deal, thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom and other establishment Democrats.

Lennar gets free land from the city and free cleanup money from the federal government. Then they build market rate units (in a real estate market that’s already oversaturated with them), except for the same 15 percent below market rate units that every other developer in town (most of whom pay for their land) is required to build. And then they give some of our land back to us to build more affordable units, at the public’s expense.

Please, somebody out there explain to me why this is such a great deal for San Francisco.

By Steven T. Jones

As overhyped and ridiculous as tomorrow’s Republican Tea Party events are, I find them a fascinating manifestation of the perplexing posture of victimhood that the US ruling class and its right-wing shills seem to revel in. So I might just have to pop down to Civic Center Plaza from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow to see San Francisco’s festivities.

The US has one of the lowest rates of taxation in the industrialized world. Fiscal conservatives have been calling the political shots in this country since 1980, resulting in an extraordinary consolidation of wealth, a threadbare social safety net, and an economic system collapsing because we refused to regulate greed and corruption.

“Yet on this Tax Day, all taxpaying Americans should be concerned that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats' runaway tax hikes will be the death of America's economy as they extend the ‘Pelosi Recession,’” warned National Republican Congressional Committee director Guy Harrison in an alarming mass e-mail. “This week, thousands of patriotic Americans will gather to protest oppressive government taxation, and stand as one for fiscal sanity at tea parties across the nation.”

Really? We should all be alarmed that Congress and President Barack Obama are considering increasing the upper income tax bracket by a couple of percentage points? Frankly, I’m pissed that they’re being too timid in getting our money back from the rich motherfuckers who stole it. And I certainly feel that our corporate-sponsored political system is essentially taxation without representation from those of us who can’t afford a campaign contribution.

So maybe we’re all a little indignant.

By Tim Redmond

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano's bill that would force the BART police to create a civilian-oversight agency came before the Public Safety Committee for a hearing today, and the BART Board -- the clueless, inexcusable BART Board -- tried to derail it.

The BART directors sent a letter to the committee saying, in effect, Trust Us: We're working away, with our closed-door committee, to draft our own oversight policy, and we'll come up with something. Maybe by the end of the year.

Ammiano probably had the votes to pass the measure out, but the committee chair, Jose Solorio, declined to call for a vote, leaving AB 312 in limbo. Solorio said he wanted to wait to see what BART came up with, and then compare the BART proposal with Ammiano's.

The problem is that BART isn't going to come up with anything. This crew has had 17 years to come up with a civilian oversight program. At least three people have been improperly killed by the BART police. We should be done trusting BART -- and an Orange County Democrat shouldn't be telling the Bay Area delegation, most of whom support the bill, how to regulate BART.

So now Ammiano has to figure out how to get Solorio to call the measure up for a vote. "I'll get it out of the Assembly," Ammiano told me. But he's going to need some help.

We haven't heard much from Sandre Swanson on this. The recent killing of Oscar Grant happened in Swanson's district; he ought to be a cosponsor of Ammiano's bill, and he should have been there at the hearing today, and he ought to be helping Ammiano lobby Speaker Karen Bass to make sure this bill gets to the floor.

And Fiona Ma, who's on the Public Safety Committee, didn't say a word in support of the bill. That's bogus, big time.

By Tim Redmond

The hottest contraband in prisons these days isn't drugs or weapons. It's cell phones. The California Department of Corrections is pushing for stiff criminal penalties for cell phone possession:

"Cell phone smuggling into California’s prisons is a very serious and growing problem. Public safety officials in prisons and prosecutors on the outside need additional tools to combat cell phone smuggling to inmates,” said Matthew Cate, CDCR Secretary. “Illegal cell phones are used to circumvent supervision of conversations, and can be used by inmates to orchestrate criminal activity, plan escapes, and be a menace outside of prison walls.

There's state legislation. There are cell-phone-sniffing dogs (seriously, cell-phone-sniffing dogs). There's a lot of press fuss, and almost all of it has focused on the possibility that crimes can be committed from inside prison wall with cell phones.

But let me suggest some other reasons why the CDC might be trying to ban these handy little devices. For one thing, forcing inmates to use incredibly expensive, overpriced pay phones is quite lucrative for private vendors and state and local government. Inmates who have cell phones can call home without forcing their loved ones to pay huge collect-call charges.

I called the CDC today to ask if revenue has dropped since cell phones started showing up in prisons, and spokesperson Gordon Hinckle said he'd get back to me if that information was something the notoriously secretive agency might be willing to release. Of course, he said, "By no means is that any reason why we're trying to crack down on this."

And then there's the fact that cell phones have cameras.

Imagine if the routine prison-guard misconduct -- the beatings, the abuse, the violence -- that goes on in state prisons could be captured by inmates and sent to the outside world. Imagine if the next Oscar Grant turned out to be a prison inmate, say, someone denied medical care or beaten near death by the authorities.

You think the wardens and the prison guards' union wants any chance of that ever happening?

I get the point about the crimes and the potential for problems. But I also think there are plenty of inmate who are just serving their time and aren't parts of gangs and aren't plotting assassinations and who might have slightly better lives if they were allowed to communicate more cheaply and freely with the outside world.

The Chauncey Bailey project and the Chronicle have major breaking news on the Chauncey Bailey front. Here's the Project's story from this morning:

By Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker, The Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — Murder charges are imminent against former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and another man in the August 2007 killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey under a plea deal reached with the only person arrested in the case, law enforcement and other sources said Wednesday night.

Devaughndre Broussard, who confessed to killing Bailey and later recanted, has signed an agreement to testify that Bey IV ordered the hit to silence the journalist and that Antoine Mackey, another of Bey IV followers, helped carry it out. Bey IV and Mackey would face murder charges if indicted by a grand jury.

Charges in two other killings in July 2007 that police long have suspected bakery members committed also

are likely. Broussard will admit to killing Odell Roberson and testify that Mackey shot and killed another man, Michael Wills. Both Roberson and Wills were slain in July of 2007 near San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland.

Grand jury testimony is scheduled for next week, followed by indictments of Bey and Mackey.

In exchange for testimony, Broussard would plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and receive a set sentence of between 20 and 30 years, officials said.

Broussard would also admit to killing Roberson at Bey IV’s order. Roberson was the uncle of Alonza Phillips, who was convicted of killing Bey IV’s older brother, Antar Bey, in 2005.

Bey IV is jailed without bail on a host of unrelated charges, including kidnapping and torture. Mackey, who San Francisco police suspect was involved in multiple unsolved gang killings, is serving an unrelated burglary charge in state prison and could be released within a year.

Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lamiero said he could not confirm any details Wednesday night.

“We are very close to a point where we are going to be able to hold accountable all of those responsible for Bailey’s murder,” he said. He declined to say anything further.

By Steven T. Jones

Responding to criticism of the corporate sponsorships of this year’s Sunday Streets events, which begin April 26, organizers say it was a necessary evil that will barely be noticeable to attendees of the six street closure events.

“It will be the same exact Sunday Streets that you saw last year,” Wade Crowfoot, who is coordinating the event for the Mayor’s Office, told us, promising that corporate signage and promotion would be minimal. “The average person will not be aware that there’s private entities funding the direct costs.”

Crowfoot headed up fundraising for the events, tapping many of the same entities that have funded Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions, including Lennar, PG&E, WebCor Builders, Clear Channel, and Warren Hellman. But with six events costing up to $300,000, he said the grassroots help from Livable City, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and other progressive groups is more important that ever.

Members of those groups love the Sunday Streets concept and recognize the city’s fiscal realities, but say this isn’t ideal. “I would have loved to have a city-sponsored event,” Livable City director Tom Radulovich told us. “It ought to be the city’s responsibility to create safe recreational spaces for people.”

You can’t blame folks for being confused about and/or suspicious of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attempted merger of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or whatever they are calling themselves these days.

(When you call folks in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, some identify themselves on their voice mail like so: "This is so-and-so with the Mayor’s Office." I won't name names, but you know who you are. And besides, this seems like an accurate description of where people feel OEWD stands in Newsom's pantheon, no matter what the department is called.)

Following the Boards’ April 15 Budget committee hearing, it became clear for the first time since Newsom announced the merger in December, that the resulting shift in funding and staff is not a done deal, since it needs Board approval, per the city charter.

As a result of yesterday's legislative revelations, the Board budget committee has convened a task force to examine Newsom’s proposal, which apparently, is part of his 2009-10 budget submission, which is due in June. The Board then has 30 days to decide, on the basis of these recommendations and its own impressions, whether to approve or disapprove of the merger.

Judging from the reactions and comments of Budget Chair Sup. John Avalos and Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi, approval seems far from automatic, with many folks worried that the merger is really about raiding the community development cookie jar in a time of ballooning deficits.

At yesterday hearing, OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz clarified that OEWD has not been part of the Mayor’s Office for years.

By Tim Redmond

Protests are going to continue at UC Berkeley over John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos authorizing CIA torture. I'm generally an academic-freedom purist, and I hate to suggest that anyone be fired from a university position because of his or her political statements.

On the other hand, the California bar does have rules of professional conduct, and one of them goes like this:

Rule 3-210. Advising the Violation of Law

A member shall not advise the violation of any law, rule, or ruling of a tribunal unless the member believes in good faith that such law, rule, or ruling is invalid

Would that include international law? Would that include advocating torture? I'm not a lawyer or an expert on legal ethics, but perhaps the state bar ought to look into this.

Daly, Longo

By Tim Redmond

The race between Chris Daly and August Longo for regional director of the California Democratic Party has gotten a blog lot of blog press -- far more attention than this low-lvel internal party stuff garners. Frankly, most people have no idea what a regional director does, or why it ought to matter to them.

But there's a lot more going on here than what the cynics see as Daly looking for a new job when he's termed out of office. (By the way, this isn't exactly a job -- the regional directors aren't paid. It's a volunteer position. And other than the chance to move up in state party leadership, it's not a job that carries a lot of power or influence. Honestly -- how many of you even knew that Longo was the ten-year incumbent?)

At the last state convention, there were signs everywhere that the Howard Dean wing of the party, the young, tech-savvy activists who were coalescing around Barack Obama, was getting restive. You saw it at the Resolutions Committee, where a handful of party-reform measures popped up, and were nadily shot down by state party Chair Art Torres. You saw it when Hillary Clinton was booed over Iraq. The Old Guard kept control, but you got a sense that the energy was all on the other side.

And now that Obama's in the White House, that reformer energy will be even more visible in Sacramento this weekend. The Daly-Longo race won't by itself change the party, but it will be a signal about its future direction.

By Tim Redmond

In the wake of a storm of criticism, here and elsewhere, the BART Board's police oversight committee has finally started holding open, publicly noticed meetings.

At the first meeting, this morning in Oakland, "they tried to take credit for the public notice, but I reminded them that the only reason they issued a notice is that we'd already emailed it out," Quintin Mecke, communications director for Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, told me.

So now it's on the record: Every monday morning, 10 a.m., at BART's headquarters at 300 Lakeside, Oakland. Feel free to show up and ask why it's taken 17 years for the board to even begin talking about police oversight.

By Rebecca Bowe

Photo by Christopher Chin / COARE

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was welcomed to San Francisco last Thursday by a host of activists dressed as marine creatures, including a few diehards in head-to-toe polar bear costumes who were probably becoming endangered species themselves by standing out in the sun. At a public hearing called to solicit comments about a federal plan for new offshore-oil development, environmentalists and elected officials demanded that the new interior secretary reject new leases for oil drilling off the California coast.

Sen. Barbara Boxer called new offshore oil drilling “an environmental and economic disaster for California” and called for investment in green alternatives instead. Her statements were echoed by a host of congressional representatives, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, and speakers from organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and others.

The five-year leasing program was a parting gift from the Bush administration. Salazar put it on hold so that he could hear from stakeholders in coastal regions. He's also shifted the focus from oil and gas exploration to possibilities for developing offshore renewable energy including wind, wave, and tidal power. But he noted that oil and gas development would remain on the table.

Look for the full story in the Guardian on Wednesday. In the meantime, the proposed plan can be found here. The Department of the Interior will accept public comments until September 21.

By Tim Redmond

One of the tricky ways Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to try to pretend to balance the city budget is by selling off taxi medallions, the permits needed to operate a cab in the city. And the drivers, with the help of Sup. Eric Mar, are organizing to fight back.

Mar, the Asian Law Caucus, the United Taxi Workers and others will hold a demonstration tomorrow, Tuesday May 21, on the steps of City Hall to denounce the plan. This is going to be an epic battle -- the mayor sees the permits as a source of tens of millions of dollars, and drivers and their advocates say a public resource is being put on the auction block -- and that ordinary drivers will get screwed.

I'm glad to see that Mar is taking this on -- cab-industry politics is complicated and often rough, and the anti-privatization folks in the cab industry need an ally at City Hall.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has announced that the city’s labor contract with the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association (SFPOA) has been amended and will net the City nearly $17 million in savings over the next two fiscal years.

“These officers, whose own jobs are not in jeopardy, are reaching out to save the jobs of other city employees,” Newsom said in a press release. “We appreciate their public spirit and leadership.”

“It was the right thing to do,” said SFPOA President Gary Delagnes.

The amendment reduces police contract expenses by 5 percent over fiscal years 2009-10 and 2010-11, by deferring 2 percent in wage increases, reducing night shift differential payments, and suspending a sick leave cash-out program.

The agreement will be extended one year beyond its original term, to June 30, 2012, with a final-year wage increase based on a survey of local police agency pay rates, the statement said.

By Tim Redmond

So of course, to nobody's suprise, Gavin announced for governor, and he did it the way he likes to do these things -- on Twitter. He claims it's all about new media, but it's actually about avoiding the old media -- Newsom hates to be challenged, can't handle himself in a tough debate and doesn't want the press to ask any questions that might rain on his self-celebratory parade.

And I can't believe this, for Newsom flak Garry South:

"The Obama campaign changed politics in America forever, from top to bottom. And anyone who tries to use the old model will find, like Hillary Clinton did, that it doesn't work anymore," South said. "We're going to take this campaign for governor to places that no other race has gone."

Yes, the Obama campaign changed politics, but techology and media were only a part of that package. Obama inspired voters with a message of hope (and competance, and fearless leadership) -- and that mattered a lot more than all the blogging and tweeting in the world.

For Newsom to compare himself to Obama is the height of misplaced arrogance.

Newsom's Facebook campaign photo, "Think Bold" -- promoting his Fresno announcement rally:

A famous photo of Obama at a Dayton rally:

Hmmm ....

Text by Sarah Phelan

David Onek is a San Francisco Police Commissioner and founding executive director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice.

When the Board voted to support due process for all youth, a few weeks ago, the ever irascible h. brown went off on one of his infamous rants, this time targeting the SFPD in general and San Francisco Police Commissioner David Onek, in particular.

“Isn’t there a police commissioner named David Onek who created a half million dollar program to milk this cow, then resigned from the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice so that his firm could grab a third of it?” brown ranted. “Write about Onek. Too hot a potato?”

I don’t normally reply to Brown’s comments, but this time they got my attention because I recently unearthed communications in a public records request related to an investigation into the city's criminal justice department that show that Brown’s claims—namely that Onek created a MOCJ grant program and benefited financially from it—are not only false, but also resemble unsourced claims in a August 2008 Chronicle article.

As such, these claims deserve to be addressed, even if some pieces of this particular MOCJ puzzle are still missing.

So, I went back, reviewed the MOCJ records again, and tried to piece together what really happened—for the sake of brown, Onek and anyone else involved in this saga, which appears to have been driven by anti-immigrant hate mongers, has harmed countless immigrant families, and lead to the Board’s support of due process for all.

This surveillance photograph of the suspected bank robber is posted at the SFPD's website.

The San Francisco Police Department has issued a description of a bank robbery suspect who threatened to blow up the Bank of America at 50 California Street, on April 15, aka tax day, if his demands weren't met.

Carrying a black lap top case, the suspect, who is described as "a white male, 6’, 190 lbs., last seen wearing a
baseball cap with “SF” on it, a khaki buttoned shirt, and blue jeans," allegedly "entered the
Bank of America on California Street, at approximately 12:50 P.M, and asked an employee to speak with the manager because he wanted to make a large withdrawal," according to a SFPD press release.

The manager took him to a room, where the suspect allegedly "explained that he worked for an organization that is concerned about government bailouts of corporations."

The suspect, who apparently was smiling throughout, then demanded cash, stating, that unless the manager complied, he would "detonate a bomb that he was carrying with him."

The cash, the suspect explained, “would go to people who deserve it," according to the SFPD.

The manager withdrew a large amount of cash from a vault and gave it to the suspect, who fled the bank on foot.

For more information--or if you have information for the police, call the SFPD's Public Affairs Office at 415.553.1651.

Chris Daly amid the picketers. Photo: Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal
By Rebecca Bowe

Imagine it’s a sweltering day, and you’re on a crowded sidewalk in a dark suit surrounded by about 200 tough, angry men who are booing you in unison, clamoring for your resignation, and yelling inches away from your face as you pass by. Do you try to dodge the swarm and duck into the building you’re headed to? Not if you’re Supervisor Chris Daly.

This afternoon, when Daly showed up downtown for the San Francisco Democratic Party Unity Luncheon at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, a crowd of building-trades union members greeted him with shouts and jeers. With cameramen shadowing his every move, Daly paraded up and down the line, seeming almost as if he enjoyed soaking in all the negative attention, getting into heated exchanges with some of the protesters and shaking hands with others. At one point, when the tradesmen started chanting, “What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!” Daly simply joined in with the chorus, punching his fist into the air for emphasis. Once people caught on, they stopped chanting and booed him all over again.

According to San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council head Michael Theriault, the protest was over proposed changes to the city’s planning code that would strengthen historic preservation standards, which he said he feared would “freeze the entire city as a historic preservation district” and put a drain on already-scarce construction jobs. Much anger was directed toward the Historic Preservation Commission, a city body created by Prop J -- a ballot measure authored by San Francisco Democratic Party chair and former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, placed on the ballot by an 11-0 vote of the supervisors, and approved by nearly 60 percent of the voters last November.

But the underlying issue was the Board of Supervisors’ 6-5 vote on April 14 that rejected Larry Mazzola Jr. as board director of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. Mazzola, who helps run the plumbers’ union, was the San Francisco Labor Council’s choice for the seat, but his appointment was blocked by the board’s six progressive members, who were more inclined to go with Dave Snyder -- a transportation expert who was deemed more qualified. “The majority of the Board of Supervisors has taken up a war against labor, and they disrespect labor. It’s all about us losing our jobs and our health coverage,” Mazzola told the Guardian just before he turned and started chanting, “Daly, resign!” about three inches away from Daly’s face.
But in an interview for a Guardian story that will hit stands tomorrow, Daly said, “at the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days. It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola.”

By Steven T. Jones

Billy Talen was an activist and performance artist living in San Francisco in the early ‘90s when he became Reverend Billy, the charismatic founder and pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping. “We were always looking for ways to highlight the politics of our time,” Talen said. “One of the ideas we had was to appropriate the right-wing icon.”

Talen, his alter ego, and his flock have evolved over the years: moving to New York City in 1996 to preach the evils of rampant consumerism from the streets of Times Square, transformed by 9/11 into something like a real church, attending Burning Man in 2003 and developing an important relationship with that community, performing around the world, making the excellent film “What Would Jesus Buy?”, and this year renaming themselves the Church of Life After Shopping to better capture the redemptive nature of their calling.

But last month, Rev. Billy took an even larger leap of faith, announcing his Green Party candidacy for mayor of New York City. He will run against Mayor Michael Bloomberg the man, but also Michael Bloomberg the Wall Street made billionaire, as potent a symbol of the capitalism ethos and excesses as any in the country.

The Guardian caught up with Talen yesterday at his campaign office in SoHo (a neighborhood where he also lived until being driven to Brooklyn by rapidly rising rents) for a long conversation about a campaign that seems to highlight the most pressing issues of these turbulent times. We’ll post excerpts from that interview, and regularly check in with the unfolding campaign, periodically between now and November.

In other words…to be continued.

By Tim Redmond

I don't see why not -- after all, Tom Ammiano as a supervisor was responsible for the two main accomplishments Mayor Gavin Newsom takes credit for in his slick campaign video.

Newsom says that San Francisco is "well on our way to universal health care." Yes, that's true -- and it's because Ammiano -- with zero help from Newsom -- pushed through the Healthy San Francisco law.

The mayor also claims that the city's bond rating is up and that San Francisco is relatively fiscally sound because of the Rainy Day Fund. Again -- that was Ammiano's bill, and Newsom did absolutely nothing to help pass it.

"He want to be the governor of appropriations, because he appropriates everyone else's ideas," Ammiano told me.

Truthfully, Newsom has very little in the way of actual accomplishments (except for same-sex marraige, which is a major accomplishment he can take a lot of credit for, but isn't pushing and doesn't even mention in his campaign video.)

What a fucking fraud.

By Rebecca Bowe

Proposed cuts to homeless-services programs drew a crowd of around 200 homeless people and service workers to the steps of San Francisco City Hall this afternoon. The Coalition on Homelessness, the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, Tenderloin Health, the SRO Collaborative and other organizations set up an outdoor drop-in center and handed out bagged lunches to rally participants. A line of tents that had been set up on the lawn was labeled as the city’s homelessness plan.

“These are not times to cut any services,” said Laura Guzman, director of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, which assists homeless people by providing case management, housing or shelter placement, and other needs. Her organization has seen some 1,500 additional visits per month since the recession hit, Guzman noted, and that they’re constantly at full capacity.

“There’s just not enough bed space to go around,” noted Mission Neighborhood Resource Center staffer Cyn Bivens.

By Tim Redmond

The Examiner claims the Sunset Reservoir solar project has run into problems, but actually, the supervisors Budget Committee sent it forward to the full board yesterday on a 2-1 vote. That means the board will vote on it this Tuesday.

I've got problems with the project -- I'm not sure it's a good idea to sign a long-term contract with a private company to do something the city ought to be able to do itself. And I have a suspicion that 15 years from now we'll look back at this as a bad deal.

At the very least, the city ought to take the position that it intends to exercise its right to buy the plant in seven years. But it's going to be harder to amend language like that into the contract at the full board.

Interestingly, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the Budget Committee, has been opposed to the current deal and wants it amended; he asked the chair, Sup. John Avalos, to continue the item, since Mirkarimi, whose son was born Tuesday, was a bit distracted this week. Avalos got Sup. David Campos, who is also a critic of the project, to take Mirkarimi's seat for the hearing.

But when the vote came down, Avalos voted to send the matter forward without a recommendation. "The room was full of people who had come to speak on this, and I didn't want to send them away thinking we'd just continued it," Avalos told me. "I thought we should act on it."

Avalos said he's not gung-ho on the deal, but is a "soft supporter." He promised that he would look at it again at Tuesday's board meeting and consider resending it to commitee.

That's what ought to happen -- there are two many issues on this to just approve it without more discussion and amendments.

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. He's going to be sending us regular reports on conditions behind bars, discussing the myths and realities facing the 170,000 people who the state of California has locked up. There's not much reporting on what goes on inside, since the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has always tried to keep the press from reporting honestly on prison conditions. We hope this helps shed some light on the gigantic taxpayer-funded California prison system. You can post questions in the comment section, and Just A Guy will try to answer them. (If it takes a while to see responses to your comments, be patient -- Just A Guy has to communicate with us from prison, and the lines out aren't always easy.)

He suggests you might get yourself in the right mindset by listening to this first.

I'm sitting on my bunk in my dorm that is over 80 degrees and humid, because it's in the 90's outside today and there is no air conditioning. In fact, there is no air conditioning in most prisons run by CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) -- yeah, seriously, rehabilitation. ... But this is nothing like what the temperature will be like in the buildings in August and September, I have seen as high as 94 degrees on the thermometer in the building.

You have all probably seen shows on TV and think you have a general idea of what it's like in prison in California. You don't have a clue.

You have been misinformed by the media, which has been mislead by CDCR and the prison guard's union as to what prisons and prisoners in California are like. Believe it or not, we're not all axe murdering, rapist, armed robbers frothing at the mouth with your children in our sights. In fact, the largest percentage of us are addicts and alcoholics in prison for the possession or dealing of drugs or crimes related to the pursuit thereof.

Being in prison makes one abundantly aware of the need for prisons. But it's also very frustrating, because it makes one abundantly aware of the need for someone to be the voice of the prisoner and let the public know what it's really like, beyond the fantasy that's been sold to you by the media and the powers that be. If you knew what it's really like, and if you came to see prisoners as people, then your voices might yearn to speak out a little bit against the reported "reality" that isn't.

My aim here is to provide you with a forum to ask questions about prison life. I have nothing to gain nor am I getting paid to do this, but feel moved to report from the inside because I can't bear the lies being told to, and believed by, the general public.

Here are a few untruths I would like to clear up:

By Tim Redmond

BART's holding a public meeting (!) to hear concerns about civilian oversight of the BART police. The place ought to be packed -- and the message I would send is that BART can't be trusted to do its own civilian oversight and ought to support the state legislation by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano.

Show up Saturday, May 2 at 1 pm, John P. Bort Metro Center auditorium, 101 8th Street, Oakland.

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom went to Sacramento this weekend to once again take credit for what others (particularly Assemblymember Tom Ammiano) have done.

But at least there's a video now that corrects the record. Check it out.

By Just A Guy

Editors note: This is the second blog post by Just A Guy, our correspondent in the California prison system. His letters from the inside will appear on Mondays and Thursdays, and he welcomes your comments and questions. It’s a little tricky communicating with inmates, since they don’t have acces computers for email, so be patient if it takes us a while to get his responses posted.

Let's talk about rehabilitation this week.

There is a great misconception that prisoners spend a large part of our time in rehabilitative programs, and that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is putting a massive effort into the rehabilitative process. But the effort isn't plainly evident to me.

To my knowledge, the only program for drug addicts and alcoholics is called SAP (substance abuse program), but this program is compulsory for those that fit the criteria. The problem with this is that the criteria seem to be a criteria of convenience in order to receive the per inmate funding granted by AB 900.

Some institutions have NA and AA meetings, but the availability of these meetings is dependent on the availability of staff to supervise the the meetings. I find it ironic that you have to sign up for a meeting that is supposed to be anonymous. The truth is that there is very little help offered to those that really want it -- and it is forced upon those that don't want it.

By Rebecca Bowe

The California Public Records Act guarantees the right to be able to request government documents that are part of the public record. But proposed legislation heard today by the Assembly Judiciary Committee would restrict access in certain cases. The bill, titled AB 520 and introduced by Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto), would authorize a superior court to limit the scope of requests a member of the public can make if the court determines that the requestor is seeking information for an “improper purpose.” The text of the bill leaves the definition of “improper” open-ended, specifying only that it is “including, but not limited to, the harassment of a public agency or its employees.”

The bill is still in the early stages, but sunshine advocates are watching closely and weighing in. Californians Aware (CalAware), the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA), and the Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California Chapter have all come out against it. Letters of opposition pointed out that even without this new restriction in place, government agencies are often slow to release public records. “Every audit performed by Californians Aware, the California First Amendment Coalition, or CNPA member newspapers such as the Contra Costa Times or Stockton Record, has shown abysmal compliance with the law,” CNPA noted in a letter to Assemblywoman Carter.

Others characterized the proposed rule as an erosion of the principles of open government that are embodied in the state constitution. “The ultimate principle arguing against AB 520 is that like the right of speech itself … the right to obtain information found in public records is so fundamental to informed democracy that certain expressions of that right, while they may be deplored as an excess of license, must be tolerated as a cost of liberty,” CalAware’s opposition letter reads.

In the context of a new presidential administration that has professed a commitment to government transparency, and even delivered on it, AB 520 looks like a giant step backward.

By Tim Redmond

Okay, I know this is totally unfair, since the real-estate agents typically do a staging setup for these photos, but if this is really Gavin Newsom's kitchen, I have to ask: Does he ever eat there? Nothing in the scene suggests that anything is ever cooked here. No knives, no pans, no cutting boards ... on the other hand, that there is one hell of a well-stocked liquor cabinet -- and since the mayor doesn't drink, he must be quite the host. (One advantage of brown -- it doesn't show the spills.)

By Tim Redmond

We're all in favor of buidling a solar-energy generating station on the Sunset reservoir. But the plan that's coming before the Board of Supervisors today is deeply flawed. At best, it ought to be amended to ensure that the city winds up with the power plant after seven years at an affordable rate; at worst, it ought to be scrapped and the city should start over again, with the idea that this is and ought to be a public-power project, built and run by the city.

"I don't understand how we can keep talking about public power while we give these resources over to private businesses," Sup. David Campos told me. He's right.

He and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi are trying to slow this thing down. Sup. John Avalos voted for it in the Budget Committee, but told me he'd consider sending it back for more discussion. I hope he does that; this thing isn't ready for approval at this point, and the progressives on the board ought to stick together and make sure it's a better contract.

Otherwise we'll wind up with a private company controlling local energy resources, and Gavin Newsom trumpeting it as his latest environmental triumph.

By Tim Redmond

So the Contra Costa County district attorney is driving everyone crazy with his vow to stop prosecuting minor crimes unless the county supervisors rescind his budget cuts.

Now, he's suggesting that burglary and reckless driving won't be prosecuted any more, which is probably not the smartest thing to say; CoCo county has a bad reckless driving problem, and announcing that burglars are free to come and go might not be so nice for the welathy homeowners with their big-screen TVs nad abundant jewelry in fancy subdevelopments.

But imagine if the DA in Contra Costa (and DAs in San Francisco and Alameda Counties) instead pledged to stop prosecuting, say, simple drug posession cases? Suppose small-time sales were included, too, along with prostitution. The counties would save a ton of money, millions of dollars that's wasted every year putting people through the court system, and sometimes into jail, for offenses that shouldn't be criminal anyway.

You could still bust the burglars and the people who run over old ladies. But you'd save even more money and the streets would be safer. No?

Text by Sarah Phelan.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has released detailed color maps that show the low-lying areas around the Bay in danger of flooding from global-warming related sea level rise. And while the maps look awfully pretty, the impacts likely won’t be.

Using U.S. Geological Survey data, the maps show the extent of inundation on each section of shoreline and
and can be enlarged to show a pretty high-rez image.

You can see the impacts of a predicted 16-inch rise, (predicted in 40 yeas) on say, the Central Bay here, a 55-inch rise (predicted in 90 years,) and, perhaps most revealing of all, a composite of the two.

First used in a BCDC draft report, Living with a Rising Bay: Vulnerability and Adaptation in San Francisco Bay and on the Shoreline, released earlier this month, the maps show that 180,000 acres of shoreline are in danger of flooding by 2050, increasing to 213,000 acres by 2100.

“This means that 84 percent of the area that will be flooded in 90 years will already be under water in 40 years,” said BCDC’s executive director Will Travis in a press release. “Most of this area is low-lying flat land that was created when shallow parts of the Bay were reclaimed by land fill projects in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Or as Leslie Lacko, the principal author of the BCDC sea level rise report on sea level rise, put it, “The areas that will be flooded by high tides at mid-century are already within the 100-year floodplain, where currently there’s a one percent chance of flooding every year. By 2050, the chance of flooding in the same area will be 100 percent every year.”

By Tim Redmond

The supervisors voted yesterday to continue for one week the proposal to let a private company build a solar plant on the Sunset reservoir. I'm glad the supes didn't approve the project, but a week's delay isn't enough. This contract has real problems, and needs to be sent back to committee for a complete overhaul.

Harvey Rose, the supervisors budget analyst, pointed out one flaw that he urged the board not to accept: The deal would require the supes to waive their right to oversee annual appropriations for the project, essentially locking the city into spending money on it every year for the next 25 years.

The Sierra Club is pushing this, arguing that right now the city doesn't have the money and only a private contactor can make this sort of project happen. I disagree: The city has the ability to float bonds for a project like this, and a solar bond act would pass by about 75 percent in San Francisco, and if local officials think there's no way to lverage some federal money for this, they aren't trying hard enough.

In fact, the appropriations deal means that the city will be financing the project, anyway, for all practical purposes. The vendor, Recurrent Energy, wants to use the contractual guarantee of annual funding to convince lenders to support the project.

Why is San Francisco so insistent on letting the private sector run our energy business? Oh, I can think of one reason: I see campaign video now.

"Gavin Newsom built the largest solar energy project in any American city -- without taxypayer money."

Great campaign line when you're running for governor. And by the time the taxpayers actually get stuck with the bill, this mayor will be long gone.

Text by Sarah Phelan.

It’s no secret that Mayor Gavin Newsom steals other people’s work and promotes it as his own—once that work proves to be politically popular.

He’s done it to Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, and former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission general manager Susan Leal.

And now Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign is combining stealing with an opportunity to give away Newsom-monogramed swag. Nice!

As Matier and Ross report, at Newsom’s block party at the state Democratic convention this past weekend, the Newsom brigade handed out 1,500 reusable aluminum water bottles embossed with Gavin’s name.

M&R claim that this act was a “reminder of his fight against water bottled in nonrecyclable plastic.” (Do we smell a Nathan Ballard-penned press release here, or was that a direct quote from Newsom’s perfectly toothed mouth?)

But the priceless truth about those free water bottles is that they are an embarrassing reminder to those in the know that it was Leal, not Newsom, who fought against the city's addiction to bottled water. A fight Leal announced moments before Newsom scampered back to City Hall to be confronted by his former right-hand man Alex Tourk about the affair Newsom had been having with Alex’s wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk.

Perhaps worse (for those of you who aren't bothered by the idea that a guy who betrayed his best friend could be seriously in the running for governor) is the fact that Leal’s fight to wean the City from the bottle, included a two-year battle with Newsom himself. Sources tell us that Newsom used to hide his bottles (his favorite being Fiji water, whenever Leal walked into the room, and that it was her edgy lead on all things greenl that was the real reason that Newsom ultimately give her the axe.

Leal for her part is now at Harvard doing bigger and better things in an arena where folks aren’t threatened by her.

Meanwhile, Newsom is busy using Twitter, Facebook to promote other people's bright ideas as his own. Scary, init?

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in the California state prison system. His reports run on Mondays and Thursdays; you can read earlier pieces here and here. It's not easy to communicate from inside a state prison, so if it takes a while for him to respond to comments, be patient.

By Just A Guy

While there are many things and topics to be discussed about prison, I would like to talk about the little things that are de-humanizing or just plain silly and disrespectful. I don't want this to be construed as whining, but want it to be understood that these are things we deal with every day, that the culmination of these things can be overwhelming, frustrating, and the wrong way to treat human beings.

Let's start with laundry. We are allowed to buy our own sweatpants, shorts, shirts, socks, t-shirts, and undergarments, and are supplied with clothes as well. We are also allowed to buy our own laundry soap like Tide, so we can wash our clothes -- but then then but we’re not allowed to hang our laundry so that it obscures a guard’s vision of us.

Now, remember that some of us live in dorms and there is no privacy whatsoever. A lot of us used to hang our towels up to dry after taking a shower, but if that towel is preventing an officer from seeing a one-and-a-half foot area of your bed, the guards will come and take it down or tell you to take it down. The same is often true of our just-washed-by-hand laundry; we are told we can hang it from our locker doors -- which are a foot wide by two and a half feet long. So basically, there is no where to hang our laundry to dry.

The funny thing is that they say it's a security issue because they can't "see" us. The problem with this is that unless you are on a top bunk, the guards can’t see in your bunk anyway; how is it a security issue?

By Steven T. Jones

Newspapers and politicians can empower citizens, or they can promote cynicism and gridlock. The package of bad choices being presented to voters in the coming election are an example of the latter, and so is an article in today’s Chronicle reporting poll results showing voters want neither tax increases nor spending cuts.

It’s certainly true that most people want maximum services and minimal taxes, but Chron’s writer Carla Marinucci does a real disservice by her selective presentation of the Field Poll results. Rather than writing “state voters strongly oppose both new taxes and cuts in their favorite programs and services,” she could have written this: A new poll shows state voters want to close the budget gap by legalizing marijuana and increasing taxes on millionaires.

Instead, readers must make the jump to learn that 56 percent of voters want to legalize and tax marijuana, something legislation by Assembly member Tom Ammiano would do. And they have to make it almost to the end of the story to read that, “Three-quarters also supported more taxes on millionaires.”

It’s sad that veteran Chronicle political writer John Wildermuth has decided to take the Hearst buyout and leave the ailing paper, and we’re left with Marinucci and her consistently disempowering and conservative point-of-view. If the Chronicle wants to become relevant to this city, they should find a political writer who can recognize and present opportunities for progress.

By Steven T. Jones

When I arrived back at San Francisco International Airport last night, weary after a long trip from Prague, I was surprised to bump into City Attorney Dennis Herrera. We chatted a moment and he told me that he was taking a red eye flight to DC to lobby the US Labor Department into supporting our Healthy San Francisco program.

As you may remember, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has been mounting an aggressive (but so far unsuccessful) legal challenge of the city’s universal healthcare program, which is partially funded by employer contributions. GGRA is now trying to get the US Supreme Court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling in the city’s favor.

Bush’s Labor Department filed an amicus brief supporting GGRA’s contention that the program violates the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a stance Herrera hopes the new administration will reverse. “We have higher hopes for the Obama Labor Department, so this is a preliminary discussion that Dennis is having with them,” Herrera spokesperson Matt Dorsey told me today.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a former restaurateur who belonged to GGRA, claims credit on the gubernatorial campaign trail for Healthy San Francisco (which was actually created by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano), but did little to either get it passed or to defend it against attack from his allies. As with same-sex marriage, the other big feather Newsom tries to wear in his candidate's cap, it is Herrera who’s doing the heavy lifting while Newsom pretends to Californians that he's leading San Francisco.

By Rebecca Bowe

The San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council is planning a “Rally for Jobs” on May 5 at Civic Center Plaza to oppose “a measure on historic preservation that would kill much of our work,” according to an announcement on the council’s Web site. “Work is hard to find now. Don’t let it go away forever,” the announcement declares. At issue is the rewrite of Articles 10 and 11 of the city’s planning code, which deal with historic preservation and are integrally linked with the newly created Historic Preservation Commission.

There’s no question that the effects of an unstable economy and the downward slide of the housing market have led to a shortage in construction jobs, and it’s clear that the workers in this industry are hurting. At the Democratic party luncheon picket last week, I spoke with a number of masons, electricians and others who were struggling to make ends meet while they were out of work. Some 400 workers in the bricklayers union alone have lost their jobs, one union member told me, and times are tough.

But is the Historic Preservation Commission to blame? Would the pending revisions of Articles 10 and 11 really be the last nail in the coffin for development in San Francisco, obliterating the last remaining construction jobs in the city? I called the city Planning Department to find out what this rewrite will mean for the city and was directed to Tara Sullivan, who works in legislative affairs and has been deeply involved in the process. “There’s some speculation that this will halt development around the city,” Sullivan told me. “But it’s not an anti-development tool at all. And it’s not citywide.”