A proposal by Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell to end San Francisco's experiment with Ranked Choice Voting will come before the board Feb. 14, and RCV suporters are organizing to fight it. According to an email I just got from Steve Hill, one of the leaders in the RCV movement, "the vote is going to be close."Read more »

If the America's Cup fundraising committee can't come up with $32 million, the city's going to be on the hook for a big chunk of change -- as much as $22 million -- budget analyst Harvey Rose says. Read more »

Before we start talking about the Facebook Windfall and all the nice new tax dollars the company will pour into the state treasury, let me take a moment to put this in perspective. Read more »

Sup. Scott Wiener is calling for an audit of the costs of complying with the city's Sunshine Ordinance -- a move that could lead to some great ideas for better public access to records or to a dangerous attack on one of the city's most important local laws.Read more »

I really, really can't figure out what the Chron's only local editorial page columnist, the conservative Debra Saunders, is trying to say. If I read her Feb. 8 column right, she's opposing the Appeals Court ruling on same-sex marriage -- and she seems to be saying that Mayor Gavin Newsom was wrong to allow gay marriages and that the whole matter ought to be decided by a statewide vote:Read more »

I'm glad Sen. Barbara Boxer, along with Sens. Patty Murray and Jeanne Shaheen, are supporting the Obama administration's decision to mandate contraceptive coverage at Catholic hospitals. Read more »

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges cited both Groucho Marx ("marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?") and Marilyn Monroe (what if the movie was called "Who Wants to Enter Into a Domestic Partnership With a Millionaire?") in discussing the importance of the word "marriage." Justice Stephen Reinhardt's ruling made clear that the only purpose of Proposition 8 was to "lessen the status and dignity of gays and lesbians in California." T Read more »

The emerging battle over whether San Francisco should allow private parties at Coit Tower is really part of a much larger political debate: How do we fund public parks? Is public space something that resources are put into, something that's paid for by tax money and preserved and made available for everyone -- or should part of the role of parks be to generate cash?Read more »