(Cross posted at Living in the O.)

At the California Democratic Convention a couple weeks ago, Gavin Newsom met with a couple dozen bloggers to talk about his campaign for governor. I was excited going into this meeting, especially since I knew exactly what question I was going to ask. It was the same question that AC Transit Director Joel Young asked at a Newsom town hall in March: what are you going to do about the fact that the state has entirely stripped funding from local transit agencies? You might remember that Newsom basically dodged the question and launched into a speech about how great high speed rail is. So this time, I was determined to get a better answer.

And surprisingly, I was somewhat impressed with his answer. He explained that coming from a city and county, he understands the needs of public transit agencies. While stimulus funds are available for capital projects, none are available to run buses, which is problematic. (Of course, this isn’t entirely true – some funds are being used for operating expenses – but it was nice to hear that he understands the need for operations funding.)

Newsom then said that California is a prosperous state and that it’s all about priorities. Except somehow he managed to skirt by without saying what his priorities are! His comments suggested that he would prioritize public transit, but he never actually committed to this. This was a theme throughout the blogger meeting – Newsom displayed a firm understanding of the issues at hand but managed to not make many specific policy promises.

My favorite line from Newsom about transit issues came not in response to my question but in an answer to Calitics’ David Dayen’s question about prison issues. Newsom said (among other things), “Building prisons is like building highways; within a few years, they’re 90% filled up.” Yes, a major candidate for governor understands that building highways is fruitless because they only generate demand and never fulfill it. Of course, he didn’t promise that he would place a moratorium on new highway construction or do anything else to stop highway expansion.

I left feeling pretty good about Newsom’s answer. Though he didn’t make specific policy promises (except on high speed rail), he at least didn’t entirely dodge my question.

But I became a bit less impressed yesterday, after reading Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi’s post on Calitics about High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Up until a few weeks ago, Garamendi was running for governor, and if he had stayed in the race, he would have blown Newsom out of the water on transit issues:

While some have raised concerns that HOT lanes give wealthy commuters special access – and this is a criticism I take very seriously – I would argue that broad access and equity in services are best achieved with a package of transportation solutions that includes the expansion of longer distance rapid transit bus service throughout key corridors in East Bay and South Bay counties. The most effective and profitable rapid transit routes reaching more inland regions of the Bay Area will have to be implemented along the proposed HOT lane network to provide a reliable enough commute to convince riders to leave their cars at home. There is nothing rapid about gridlock.

Rapid transit buses, which along city streets allow bus commuters to avoid most traffic lights, have been shown to be popular and effective in the Bay Area and should be considered a low-cost solution in areas where a more speedy public transit commute is desired but rail is impractical. A study of a busy seven-city 14-mile Bay Area route by the Federal Transit Administration determined that the rapid transit line reduced end-to-end travel time by an average of 12 minutes, leading to a 21 percent reduction in time previously spent on local service non-rapid bus lines. Ridership across all areas of the corridor increased by 8.5 percent as a result of the rapid transit line, and most significantly, around 19 percent of rapid transit riders previously used a car for their commute along the corridor, a reduction of around 1,100 auto trips per day.

Garamendi touched on two issues that are near and dear to my heart: taxing drivers to pay for public transit and BRT expansion. If he was still in the race for governor, I’m pretty sure I would have signed up for his campaign immediately after reading this. Though Newsom gets larger public transit issues, it’s clear from this blog post that Garamendi understands the nuances of public transit issues.

But transit advocates don’t have to decide between Garamendi and Newsom. Garamendi has jumped into the race for Ellen Tauscher’s congressional seat in CA-10 and is the fruntrunner in the race. Which means that East Bay residents might soon have a high speed rail governor and BRT congressman.

For an excellent and comprehensive write up of the Newsom bloggers meeting, check out Robert Cruickshank’s post at Calitics.

Radulovich grilled staff about the wisdom of borrowing $150 million for this project, since that would take away borrowing capacity for other priorities, like replacing rail cars. He also questioned their ridership estimates (as I have), saying they clearly are not conservative, especially since they do not estimate any ridership drop once high speed rail is in service.

Radulovich was very concerned that BRT had not been explored recently, even though it seemed like a good fit. He told a story that I have told so many times about BRT. Radulovich, like me, grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where no one rode the bus (or any transit) unless they absolutely had to. But then the BRT Orange Line was built, and they met their 2020 ridership projections in just a couple of years. That success sold Radulovich on the BRT concept. As I often argue, if BRT will pull LA drivers out of their cars, it can do the same in the East Bay.

The biggest complaint from Radulovich was about the proposed fair for the rail OAC. He argued that the $6 fare would be more expensive than traveling to SFO and would be unfair to airport workers. Though some of his colleagues have argued that those who can’t afford it could just ride the bus, he said that it wasn’t right to have a two tiered system. Besides the social justice aspects, the two tiered system would negate any environmental impacts since the buses would still have to run.

At the end of his speech, Radulovich presented a perfect analogy. He said that in a house, you fix the foundation before adding a master suite or a jacuzzi. He then retracted that and said the BART system was closer to being a house on fire. Can you imagine upgrading a house as it burned to the ground? That’s basically what the BART Board would be doing if they borrow $150 million and allow the OAC project to move forward as is.

Several of Radulovich’s colleagues echoed his concerns but ultimately almost all of them sounded like they would vote to take out the loan. Luckily, Director Franklin saved the issue by proposing to delay the vote on the loan until the next meetin, and all the directors voted for this, except for Carol Ward-Allen, who abstained.

BART will be considering this issue again on Thursday, May 14th. I have no delusions that it will be easy to convince the directors that the right move is to scrap the current proposal in favor of a much cheaper and more effective BRT project. After all, we’re going up against BART staff, construction unions, business interests, and Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid. But BRT would be the right move – for Oakland, for BART, and for the greater Bay Area – and transit advocates are going to do our best to convince the directors of that.

Check back later this week for much more info and for ways to get involved.

Coming into this weekend, I had lots of expectations for the convention, some of which have proved to be correct and others of which turned out to be pretty far off base from reality. But these past couple of days have certainly been incredible.

It's been great to spend time with people I know well, those who I just met, and friends who I've only known online up until now.

It's odd, because though I've been a Democrat since long before I could vote, I didn't start getting involved with the party until a few years ago, and didn't become intimately involved until several months ago. Yet I still sense that so much has changed, and that feeling has been echoed by others who have been involved for much longer than I.

At caucus after caucus that I attended, the “change” candidates were elected. Jenn Pae, a young Dem from the Bay Area, was elected as Northern California Chair to the API caucus, over an opponent who was nominated by Board of Equalization member Betty Yee. The vote was done by a raise of hands, and it was clear that young Dems carried this vote for Jenn. Karen Bernal, a Bay Area progressive activist, was elected as Chair of the Progressive caucus by a landslide. And on Saturday morning, hundreds of Democrats lined up at 7:30am to vote for Karen Weinstein and her change slate to lead the Women’s caucus.

Then the huge win came last night. As I was eating dinner with fellow Caliticians Robert and Julia, and several others, we got word that Hilary Crosby had won the race for CDP Controller. Why is this so great? I’ll steal the words of Edie Irons:

Hilary is exactly the change our party needs. She’s a CPA and auditor of nonprofits with a long history of Democratic activism. She’ll shine a light on the party’s finances and spending habits and raise big money from the grassroots and other untapped sources, so the party will be more accountable to voters and activists. She’ll train county committee treasurers to raise more money and keep good records, and she’ll take the Finance Committee out from behind closed doors. This strikes me as the only party office race where we have a stark choice between the status quo and a new direction.

It hasn’t just been the election results that have left me feeling like the Party could be headed in a new direction. Young Democrats have been very visible at the convention, and many of us for the first time served as delegates. I don’t think it’s a jump to conclude that young Dems were instrumental in securing Crosby’s win, as it was a close race.

Bloggers have also been recognized. Many statewide electeds and candidates held meetings with bloggers, including SF Mayor Gavin Newsom and Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi.

I’ve felt incredibly welcomed here, especially by fellow young Dems and Caliticians. Though I’ve been kicking myself a bit for not getting more involved in the Party earlier, I feel like I might have picked the perfect time to get active. We’ll have to see what happens today with the endorsement votes for the ballot initiatives, but regardless of what happens, I’m looking forward to the future of the Party and hope to stay involved for a long time to come.

Which brings me to another point that I don’t think I covered well enough in the last post on this subject. One of the reasons that I don’t think BART can meet its ridership projections for the OAC is because this rail project would only have two stops – Coliseum BART and the Oakland Airport. There will be no stops in between, and since the project is so expensive, I’m guessing there will be no chance for future expansion past the Coliseum BART.

If instead, we built a state of the art BRT system – complete with gorgeous buses with low floors and attractive stations – there could be several stops between BART and the aiport. Not only that, but since BRT is so much cheaper, we could use some of the savings to expand the BRT project beyond BART to the 1/1R line, which will ultimately be a BRT line. It could even be expanded further, to Eastmont Mall, which is already a transit hub. This would mean that a BRT airport connector would serve East Oakland residents, in addition to serving air travelers. And with an ultimate savings that could be redistributed among Bay Area transit agencies to halt fair raises and/or service cuts.

I’ll be going to the BART Board meeting tomorrow morning to tell them all of this. If you’d like to join me, the meeting is at 9:00am at the Kaiser Center 20th Street Mall – Third Floor, 344 – 20th Street in Oakland.

When it comes to transit, Bates does not just lead by example, but leads legislatively as well. In February, he was the only member of the MTC to vote against using stimulus funds for the wasteful Oakland Airport Connector. He knew that this project was not the best use of MTC funds and could better be used by local transit agencies, like AC Transit and Muni, which have been forced to raise fares and cut service due to shrinking tax revenues and the state cutting funding.

Bates has also been a leader on the Bus Rapid Transit Policy Steering Committee, made up of reps from AC Transit, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro. While Kriss Worthington, Berkeley’s other rep on the committee, has tried his best to tie up the project by making it contingent on unrelated projects, like a universal pass, Bates has tried his best to move the project forward. He is strongly committed to BRT, even though this makes him unpopular with a vocal minority in Berkeley that wants to kill the project.

And now Bates has taken his transit activism into the personal realm by getting rid of his car. I hope his continued committment to transit will inspire others to take up this cause.

(Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about political candidates courting bloggers. Though the article was a bit shallow, I was glad to see the Chronicle recognizing the influence of bloggers on politics, and even happier to see my friend Sean from BearFlagBlue interviewed for the article.

The article opens with this story:

Dennis Herrera is running for re-election as San Francisco's city attorney and loudly rumored to be eyeing the mayor's office down the road. So a few weeks ago, he invited about a dozen influential folks to a local restaurant for drinks (on his campaign's tab) and some face time. Those folks were local bloggers.

At first, I thought, great, this is really smart on Dennis Herrera's behalf. He must have some savvy staffers. But then I thought about the fact that bloggers were accepting drinks from a candidate they hadn't endorsed. I'm not suggesting that these bloggers would be influenced by a few drinks and would be more likely to endorse because of this, but I'm not sure that this kind of behavior fits into my own blogger code of ethics.

The more I thought about it, and talked to others about it, the stickier the issue became. I racked my brain and realized that though I've never accepted a drink (or anything else) from a political candidate, I'd certainly allowed elected officials to buy me drinks without thinking twice. I do write about some of these officials, and of course most of them are likely to run for re-election or another office in the future.

There's also the issue that bloggers, unlike journalists, usually don't get paid for our work. And for all of the bloggers I know, time is a very precious thing. So then maybe that makes it ok to accept a drink from a political candidate who'd like to meet with us – after all, they are requesting our time and often our advice.

On Friday, Brittney Gilbert addressed a similar issue – the Federal Trade Commission passed new rules that allow the FTC to sue bloggers who make false claims about a product that the bloggers received from companies for free. It's clear to me that products and political candidates are a different, but these new regulations raise interesting questions about a blogger's responsibility to be truthful and not swayed by free products or free drinks.

I have no final answer here. I'm pretty sure that I will continue to not accept free drinks from political candidates, but I'm not sure where the ethical line ultimately falls. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this tricky issue.

(Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

Yesterday, I checked out Capitol Weekly, as I do every Thursday and was excited to see that one of their weekly features focused on the Oakland mayor’s race. Well, I didn’t stay excited for too long. In “Experts Expound,” they asked a bunch of Sacramento “experts”:

 “Don Perata is running for mayor of Oakland — a job he’s always wanted. Can he beat Ron Dellums? Why or why not?”

As any Oaklander would know, this is an absurd question to ask. Dellums isn’t running! Perata made this clear in his media interviews this week. And if Dellums ran again, Perata would crush him – it would be embarrassing.

After getting over the fact that this question was basically pointless, I browsed through the answers, some of which were pretty funny:

He can win.  He’ll make the voters an offer they can’t refuse.

He will have all of those FBI agents following him when he walks precincts. People in Oakland will like this. It is his Posse. Perata wins.

Oakland Punchline – Ron Dellums is soooo bad that even Don Perata can beat him.

And then there was this answer, which was even more out of touch with Oakland politics than the initial question:

It will be close. Dellums has the same name I’d and an equal number of supporters.

Really? Has this person ever picked up a local paper or talked to anyone who lives in Oakland? Or maybe the person who said this has been out of the country for the past two years and missed Dellums’s descent.

Maybe Capitol Weekly and it’s Sacramento “experts” should stick to what they know, state politics, and stay out of Oakland politics. Either that, or they should consult some Oaklanders next time.

 (Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

Last night, I went to Gavin Newsom’s town hall at the Rotunda in downtown Oakland. Overall, I wasn’t surprised by the event. He touched on many subjects – health care, education, improving the environment – and his overriding theme for the evening was that while many candidates talk about these issues, he has shown real progress on them. He did fail to mention though that many of the projects he took credit for last night (like universal health care) actually originated in the Board of Supervisors. But that’s pretty typical – he’s a politician and of course is going to take credit for everything he possibly can.

I really appreciated the fact that he took almost an hour of unfiltered questions from the audience. And I could not have been much more pleased when our new AC Transit Director, Joel Young, asked the first question. Joel explained that the state had defunded public transit and asked if Newsom, as governor, would restore public transit funding.

Newsom responded that public transit is so important for the environment and briefly answered, “Yes,” that he would restore the funding. But then instead of explaining why or how, he jumped into a long-winded speech about high speed rail. He started off by saying that he wanted to tell us about a project that he knew not all of us supported because it barely passed. This is a strange thing to say because 63% of Alameda County voters voted in favor of Prop 1A.

He then explained how high speed rail was going to change the state, creating jobs and changing how we thought about and used transportation. He talked about his vision for the “Grand Central Station of the West,” which is what some are calling the Transbay Terminal. Energetically, he explained how this would greatly improve the Bay Area region, making it easy to get from downtown to downtown (Oakland to SF).

And that was it. That was his answer to an AC Transit Director.

Now I’m very supportive of high speed rail (though I think it was a failure to choose the Pacheco alignment over the Altamont alignment), and I endorsed Prop 1A. But high speed rail won’t do us much good if our local transit agencies crumble. Getting from downtown to downtown might be made easier, but most of us don’t live downtown so if AC Transit cuts lines that would get us there, this “Grand Central Station” won’t be much help to us, will it?

As you might have read in the Chronicle yesterday, AC Transit will be voting tomorrow on fare increases, and soon after that will consider service cuts. And it’s not just AC Transit. More than 80 local transit agencies nationwide are facing fare increases and/or service cuts. At the same time, ridership is increasing, in the East Bay, the Bay Area, and beyond.

What I’m looking for in a candidate for governor is someone who not only understands and is committed to the big, sexy transit projects like high speed rail, but for someone who shares the same commitment to funding and improving our local transit agencies. I want to find a candidate who gets excited talking about buses and who understands the need to solve this problem (PDF, via A Better Oakland). Last night, Newsom failed to prove that he is that candidate so, for now, I’ll continue my search.

(If you’d like to read about the other topics Newsom covered, check out a diary at Daily Kos by a friend I sat with last night.)

Cross-posted at Living in the O.

I was deeply upset last night when I heard that Assembly Speaker Karen Bass had stripped Oakland’s Assemblymember, Sandre Swanson, of his committee chairmainship. Swanson wasn’t alone in receiving this punishment:

Three Assembly Democrats who broke with their caucus by voting against a state spending cap and other budget trailer bills have been stripped of committee chairmanships. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers who supported the party majority have gotten promotions.

Those losing out are Assembly members Sandré Swanson of Alameda, Tony Mendoza of Artesia and Warren Furutani of Gardena. All three voted against a key budget compromise to put a state spending cap before voters. Now, following a flurry of new assignments by Bass, all three are former chairs of Assembly committees.

Now of course Bass is keeping quiet about this, refusing to say whether these members were stripped of their positions because of their votes on the spending cap, but it’s clear that this is the reason why she did it. I happen to agree with Swanson’s position on this vote and have great respect for him, since he voted this way even though he knew he would likely be punished by party leadership. But regardless of opinions on which way he should have voted, this is just messed up and it happens all too often in the legislature, on both sides of the aisle.

The intended effect of actions like this is to put party members into place, to remind them that they are only as powerful as they are because party leadership allows them to be, and that if they cross the party, they will be punished. This has a stifling effect on speech and forces legislators to respond first to party leadership, instead of representing their constituents.

Beyond that, it makes a mess of the legislative process. Swanson charied the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. The committee staff will now leave his office (or, more likely, they’ll stay in the physical office and Sandre and his staff will move to a smaller space), and will have a new Assemblymember as their boss.

And what of the bills that were headed for hearings at the Labor Committee? I know that if this had happened last year, I would have entirely freaked out. The organization I work for was working on passing a bill through the legislature that would have protected medical marijuana patients’ right to work (we did end up passing it, but Schwarzenegger vetoed it). We had been working with committee staff and focusing our efforts on committee chairs, including Swanson. This move would have entirely pulled the rug out from under our efforts and we basically would have been back to square one.

Which reminds me… I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Swanson’s time as Labor Committee Chair, but I do have one strong memory of him from the committee meeting I attended on our bill, AB 2279:

A representative from the National Federation of Independent Business voiced his concerns about the bill. He stated that testing for impairment on the job would be difficult and employees could still come to work impaired. He argued that if a medical marijuana patient was impaired and caused an accident, the employer would be held liable and would have to provide worker’s compensation…

Swanson then took his turn to grill the opponents. He asked the rep from the National Federation of Independent Business whether he had any statistics or examples of accidents medical marijuana patients had caused. Our opponents could not even come up with one example.

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to see my Assemblymember in action that day, but am sad to know that one vote can cost a generally party-loyal member such an important position.

 Cross-posted at Living in the O.

As Robert mentioned in his post this morning, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will be voting this Wednesday on how to use federal stimulus funds. While they’ve scrapped one of their initial wasteful proposals, the Transbay Terminal train box, they are still proposing to use $70 million for the Oakland Airport Connector. V Smoothe summarized the proposed project and its history last week at OakBook:

BART’s Oakland Airport Connector is a proposed 3.2-mile elevated tramway that would ferry passengers from the Coliseum BART station to the Oakland Airport. Since the agency did not have enough funding to finance the project in full, they began seeking private partners to help build the rail line. All three interested parties dropped out of the project last year, citing concerns about profitability. At the time, BART officials said they would drop plans for the elevated train and begin exploring more affordable ways of providing a reliable connection between the station and the airport, such as dedicated bus lanes.

But then of course Congress passed the stimulus package, and MTC staff proposed to use $70 million of the funds to revive the Oakland Airport Connector project.

Now, I can understand why the Oakland Airport Connector is such a tempting project. I’m going to be taking BART to the airport this Friday evening, and a quicker and more reliable connection would save me a lot of time. The problem with the project as currently proposed is that it’s incredibly expensive, and like so many of BART’s projects, relies on ridership statistics that are entirely unrealistic. (They’re predicting that more people would use this connection than take BART to SFO!)

Another problem, as TransForm explains, is that the Airport Connector is not “shovel ready.” Meanwhile, transit agencies around the Bay Area are struggling, especially since the state has pulled all funding from public transit statewide. These local agencies, including AC Transit, desperately need these funds to continue providing an adequate level of service and to avoid raising fares. Even spread out among the regional transit operators, $70 million would have a huge impact.

The best part is that even if MTC decides not to provide this $70 million to the Oakland Airport Connector, BART already has sufficient funds to solve the problem of slow bus travel from the Coliseum BART station to the Oakland Airport. That solution is Bus Rapid Transit. BRT would take buses out of traffic and shuttle riders quickly and reliably to and from the Oakland Airport. And BRT could be completed in much less time and with far less money than the current proposed connector, shifting the $70 million to where it could make an impact now.

MTC staff seem pretty stuck on this idea so it’s up to us to convince the MTC that the needs of local transit agencies should take precedence over another pie in the sky BART proposal. Here’s what you can do, via TransForm:

Join us on Weds., Feb. 25th at 10am at MTC (101 8th St., across from Lake Merritt BART) in telling the Commissioners to direct new funding to critical public transit needs, not the costly Oakland Airport Connector. It’s important that we coordinate our message for maximum impact. Please let us know if you’re coming and get a copy of talking points by contacting Joel Ramos.

If you can’t make the meeting, email your comments opposing the use of recovery funds for the OAC to John Goodwin at MTC now at [email protected].

Eric at Transbay Blog agrees about the Oakland Airport Connector and provides more background on this project and the MTC’s funding proposal.