Close votes push reform down the road

by Brian Leubitz

Today is the last day to get bills out of their house of origin, and so we have a bit of controversy as a few bills got the big red X. First up, in an 18-19 vote, the Senate voted down Sen. Mark Leno’s SF-specific Ellis Act reform.

Legislative efforts to give San Francisco the ability to curtail the number of Ellis Act evictions in the city failed Wednesday night as the state Senate rejected a bill by Sen. Mark Leno after an 18-19 vote. …

SB1439 would have required a San Francisco landlord to own a building for at least five years before they could evict tenants using the Ellis Act. The 1986 state law allows property owners to evict tenants in order to get out of the rental business, but it has been used by speculators as a way to buy affordable properties, evict tenants and flip the rental for profit. (SF Gate)

This bill has caused a lot of Senators to say a lot of uninformed nothings. I shouldn’t say uninformed, as they are actually quite informed by the California Apartment Association. Exhibit A pointed out by reporter Melody Gutierrez:

“Over and over and time and time again I heard from cities and counties asking to be exempt from having to build affordable housing,” said Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona. “San Francisco has not done their fair share and now they are coming to us and saying because we have not provided affordable housing, we want you to pass along the cost to the small landlords.”

Not only is this factually incorrect, and it is, but it continues on from the garbage data to talking points from the CAA. You would think that the Senator would trust the information from her colleague, Senator Mark Leno. But nope, SF has built a lot of affordable housing. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. San Francisco is at “full employment” and is becoming something of a bedroom city with the tech shuttles taking SF residents to Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile from the Dept. of Short Term Thinking, the Assembly rejected Asm. Tom Ammiano’s AB1894 on medical marijuana. The bill would have created a state body to regulate medical marijuana, instead of the baffling patchwork of regulations that are in place now.

No lawmakers rose to explicitly denounce Assembly Bill 1894, by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. Some with concerns about preserving local control said they had been persuaded that cities and counties could still pass and enforce their own rules around medicinal cannabis.

But a large bloc of lawmakers from both parties withheld votes, ensuring that the measure would go no further. The final vote was 27-30, with 22 not voting.(SacBee CapAlert)

In a perfect world this wouldn’t be necessary either. It would simply be folded into regulatory bodies that already monitor alcohol at the local,state, and federal levels. But, this is not that world, and who knows when the federal government will learn the lesson that they should have learned from the 1920s. (If not, perhaps they should watch Boardwalk Empire for a few hours.) Here in the world we live in, the state needs a more consistent regulatory regime, and Ammiano’s bill would have started that process.

Bills can be reconsidered, and Leno’s Ellis Act bill is scheduled for that process today. Expect to see a slew of stories tomorrow about bills that moved on and those that failed.