By Rebecca Bowe

San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon offered an explanation yesterday for why it took so long for the San Francisco Police Department to provide any figures whatsoever on how much it spends on security detail for elected officials: Apparently, no one really had any idea what the costs actually were.

“Quite frankly, when I first came here I asked multiple times, how much are we spending in dignitary protection? And I could not get the answer within my department,” Gascon told the Board of Supervisors yesterday.

Sup. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

A coalition of environmental organizations argued yesterday that a permit issued to Poseidon Resources to build a massive desalination plant near San Diego should be revoked, because the company failed to provide complete information to California Coastal Commission staff. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

The SF Weekly once made up a story on its Snitch blog about how LAFCo is the Guardian’s imaginary friend (this was back before they had imaginary delivery vehicles). So it’s kind of ironic that LAFCo should be the one to respond to an attack mailer paid for by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

"The war with PG&E over clean energy is now fully on folks."

That's what local public power activist Eric Brooks had to say in a widely distributed email to alert green-power advocates that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has started a smear campaign against San Francisco's community-choice aggregation program, CleanPowerSF.

A “coalition” backed by PG&E recently sent glossy brochures to San Franciscan's mailboxes, and launched a Web site called CommonSenseSF.com. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

In a report officially released yesterday, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury tore apart Marin Clean Energy, a community-choice aggregation program that is intended to reduce the region’s greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change.

The Civil Grand Jury report called the project “costly and extremely risky” and recommended that the whole effort be abandoned. It criticized the program as adding another layer of bureaucracy at a time when resources are limited, and described it as being plagued with uncertainty. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

Tomorrow evening, Project Censored will celebrate its release of Censored 2010, a yearbook compilation of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-2009, published through the nationally renowned program at Sonoma State University. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

How much did the mayor's security detail cost when he campaigned outside SF? SFPD isn't telling.

When San Francisco Police Department Assistant Chief Jim Lynch spoke before the Rules Committee this morning, he mentioned that the Police Chief George Gascon was unable to attend because he was at the swearing-in ceremony of Los Angeles’ new police chief.

“Out of curiousity,” Sup. Read more »