We’ve all heard the classic stories about the one-light towns out there that keep the books balanced by keeping the police busy writing tickets.

We don’t usually think of these rural towns as models of a transparent and progressive administration. That’s why we shouldn’t adopt these kinds of “gotcha” revenue-generating tactics here in San Francisco by turning our entire city into a parking trap.

Unfortunately, just this past week the San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Authority announced its plans to instruct our already hard-working traffic officers to increase the number of parking tickets they issue. The revenue from parking tickets – which MTA had projected to be right around $99 million – has fallen short. So now they are setting higher quotas to raise additional revenue.

We certainly do need more revenue in San Francisco. And one of the city agencies that needs additional funding the most is the Municipal Railway. But we need to make sure this new revenue is generated in a way that is fair to all and in a fashion that takes into account a person’s ability to pay.

What’s wrong with the new MTA parking ticket quotas is that they are the exact opposite – they are essentially a tax lottery, with the unlucky paying more than the lucky. They are unfair, with taxpayers fortunate enough to own garages (usually the wealthier homeowners) less affected than those who do not (usually the less-wealthy renters). And at their core, they are regressive, with the very poor paying just as much as the very rich.

As Assessor-Recorder in San Francisco, my job is to make sure we have a fair property tax system. And I have not been shy about taking on some powerful players – like big banks and other politically connected institutions when I thought they were not paying what they owed. Along with a number of others I have also helped form Close the Loophole – a statewide organization dedicated to reforming Proposition 13 so that commercial property owners start to pay their fair share.

These new revenue sources have several important things in common – they take into account the ability to pay and they are assessed in a predictable fashion. Property taxes, assessed fairly, are progressive in the truest sense because the more expensive the property the higher the revenue generated. And when a person buys or transfers property, they can predict what taxes they owe.

San Francisco has been seeing a healthy debate recently about progressive values. Let’s extend this debate to discussing the many problems with regressive and random revenue generation.

We already have some of the nation’s most expensive tickets. And pity to the person who has his or her car towed – the fees can quickly soar to $500 and above. I have been deeply involved in the movement to fight unfair foreclosures, and I know that $500 for many families is the difference between staying in their homes and eviction.

What has crept into this debate is some sense that people are to “blame” for driving and if they get tickets, then they simply should give up their cars or be more careful.

Certainly, we do not want to tolerate violations of our parking laws. And we do want to continue to pursue a city policy that draws people out of their cars with better public transit, smarter planning and walkable and bikeable streets. But enforcement should be based on safety – not new revenue. And, we need to understand that given the state of our Municipal Railway right now, some people simply must drive.

The parent with two kids at two different schools is going to have trouble on a bicycle. People with mobility issues sometimes need to drive. And most of us know others who have no other real choice – like the janitor who reports to work at 7:00PM. These San Franciscans deserve a tax system that is fair and progressive – not a random lottery that targets them to raise revenue.

Let’s certainly raise more revenue. But let’s do it in a way that reflects our progressive values – with a progressive tax system.

You can make the difference in two clicks. First, sign my petition to tell City Hall to tear up the unfair ticket plan. And second, join the movement I have been leading for nearly two years called Close the Loophole and let’s fix what’s broken in Proposition 13 and bring real solutions to San Francisco.

Phil Ting

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder

As we wait to see what sort of pain the Governor’s budget will bring, San Francisco made some news again yesterday.  Rather than appointing one of the political types that have been bandied about, Mayor/LG Newsom, always one for a bit of the dramatic, went for the unexpected by selecting SF Police Chief George Gascón.

Now, Gascón has been pretty popular in SF since he arrived about a year and a half ago, but his name was never really mentioned in connection with the DA gig.  There are a number of reasons for that.  While he did graduate from Western State University College of the Law, he has never really practiced law. Instead, he’s been a full-time cop, moving up the ladder in the LAPD (and serving as the Chief of Mesa,AZ).

Now, while he may not have the trial experience of a Kamala Harris, it is clear that the DA of a county like SF rarely actually litigates cases anymore.  Rather, the job is more strategic, and that is what Harris excelled in.  And so it is no surprise that he chose to praise that ability of his predecessor:

At his swearing-in ceremony a few hours later, Gascón said he planned to continue many of Harris’ programs.

There will be one distinct change, however. Unlike Harris, Gascón said he had no objection to seeking the death penalty in cases that warrant it.(SF Chronicle)

Of course, in a city like San Francisco, the death penalty is neither popular nor particularly easy to get.  Kamala Harris just didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities to attempt to get the death penalty even had she wanted to, and Gascón is going to learn a bit about those feelings as he enters his new found career in San Francisco politics.

Speaking of those political issues, no word on whether this presents any changed circumstances for other announced candidates.  Current DA Administrator Paul Henderson and Boalt Hall criminal justice expert David Onek have already announced their candidacies. Former prosecutor Jim Hammer is also rumored to be interested.  

Just a few minutes ago, City Administrator Ed Lee was selected as Interim Mayor for soon to depart (?) Gavin Newsom.

City Supervisors selected City Administrator Ed Lee as interim mayor, putting an end to a long and agonizing debate over who will replace outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom.

While away in Hong Kong, Lee has been the center of media attention and political discussion since Tuesday when his name emerged as the leading candidate for interim mayor. (SF Weekly Blog)

The vote went down at 10-1, with outgoing D6 supervisor Chris Daly being the lone dissenter.  Of that, Daly said:

I’ve seen go along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go along to get along doesn’t do it. ([SFBG I’ve seen go along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go along to get along doesn’t do it.”])

In the end, a strong show of support organized by Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown pushed this historic mayor over the top.  Lee will become the first Asian-American Mayor of San Francisco, and will not be running for re-election.  Apparently, part of the deal was that Lee would retain much of Newsom’s staff for the duration of the term.

Not much is known about Lee, but he is said to be personally close with most of the supervisors.  His politics are unclear, but one can expect a pretty steady hand from Newsom’s administration.  

While most people were fixated on the “Donkey Kong” mention in last night’s speech by Chris Daly, what about the actual content of the speech? Immediately before Donkey Kong, Daly made his promise to Board President David Chiu:  “I will haunt you. I will politically haunt you for the biggest fumble in history.”

As Daly is termed out this week, can he make good on this promise? The answer is a yes, and big time. For three key reasons.

Chris Daly’s Relationships: If you only read CW Nevius, you might be misinformed enough to come to the conclusion that Daly is a pariah in San Francisco. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Chris Daly is the most accomplished legislator on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors because he knows so many people so well that he can put together big deals, often with strange bedfellows. Tonight is the “roast” of Chris Daly, which will have as many downtown suits as SOMA hipsters. Daly can scroll through his cell phone and identify dozens of people he knows on each side of every issue. On every single issue, Daly can make Chiu’s life miserable, but Daly also has the political instincts to identify the most critical pressure points.

Social Networking: Chris Daly’s Facebook is an active community with 2,562 people that he has repeatedly used to create news that is picked up by the traditional press. Daly’s twitter is only followed by 621 people right now, but that’s mostly because Daly prefers Facebook. While those numbers may not sound huge, scroll through the names and you’ll see a who’s who of influence makers in San Francisco. Daly can change the framing and dynamics of issues before the Board, especially with early messaging. If he bought an ipad, he could easily post from behind the bar. That is some serious haunting potential.

Buck’s Tavern: David Chiu should be haunted by the mere thought of Daly now having a watering hole so close to City Hall. No matter what issue, operatives on the other side of Chiu can stop by and drop info to Daly. The nature of San Francisco’s political fissures means that in any given year, almost everyone in town will have an issue where they disagree with Chiu and agree with Daly. Plus, Daly opened the bar with Ted Strawser, who is a triple-threat with political game, online game, and event organizing mastery. Already, people are gravitating to Bucks as it fills the long vacant role of a City Hall bar. Drinking Liberally has already moved to Bucks — it is rapidly turning into the place to go for politics in San Francisco. Plus, look at the geography. Two short blocks from Van Ness & Market. In District 6, but District 5 begins across the street and District 8 is two blocks away. District 9 starts less than a dozen blocks away and Chiu’s District 3 is three stops away on the Muni underground or a dozen blocks up the hill on Van Ness. Location, location, location. There’s a reason Willie Brown ’99 and Matt Gonzalez ’03 both ran their campaigns out of a building two blocks away.

Those are the three major givens and three huge reasons why Daly can haunt David Chiu. But he could also easily go further. I’d be surprised if Daly didn’t consolidate his new watchdog role into an actual organization. He can raise far more money at the bar then it would cost for him to start a PAC, set up a website, and start building out his list.

Chris Daly can easily haunt David Chiu. And from what I’ve heard, it’s On Like Donkey Kong!

We are about to witness the biggest fumble in the history of progressive politics in San Francisco and the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of David Chiu. I will haunt you. I will politically haunt you for the biggest fumble in history. It’s on, like Donkey Kong.”

– Supervisor Chris Daly, January 4, 2011 (Beyond Chron)

And thus the phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong” entered the San Francisco political lexicon.  The whole story is somewhat (well, vastly) more complex.  But let me outline what I’ve learned while being away, and the timeline as I see it. KQED and the SF Appeal have good wrap-ups.

1) The current Board, which leaves office on Saturday, tried to pass a declaration that the Mayor has left his job already, that he should have been inaugurated, and the procedure of a technical inauguration doesn’t matter.  They then pushed for the Sheriff Mike Henessey, who is pretty universally respected.  However, being that this process is more about personal power politics than respect, things didn’t go so smoothly.  Henessey was only able to get 5 votes, rather than the required 6.  

2) Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell went to a closed-door meeting with Newsom, and thereby reversed their previous votes against City Administrator Ed Lee, and suddenly, the little known Lee had 7 votes.  This includes the support of Eric Mar, one of the core bloc of progressive votes on the Board.

3) The Board was recessed after several Supervisors objected to the fact that they had neither spoken to Lee nor had the opportunity to talk to him, as he is currently in Hong Kong.

4) When the Board came back, that’s when we get Daly’s above quote about haunting Board President David Chiu’s career. The episode, along with the fact that Lee is out of the country, were enough to get the vote delayed until Friday.

5) Oh, and as an added bonus, the incoming Board can change the interim Mayor at their discretion, so it is all seems a bit temporary.

It seems clear that Lee is willing to take the job, as long as he can get his old job back once the new Mayor is elected in November. A deal seems to be in place to retain most of Newsom’s staff in a possible Lee administration.  Lee’s connections to Rose Pak (a Chinatown powerbroker) seem to tilt the balance of power in his direction, with her ties to both David Chiu and incoming D6 supervisor Jane Kim.  The rumored other leg of this deal is the possible appointment of Chiu to the now vacant District Attorney’s post that AG Kamala Harris recently left.

This works on many levels for Newsom. First, it gets a relative moderate to keep the seat warm until November, which was really Newsom’s main goal.  But as an added bonus, Ed Lee becomes the first Asian-American Mayor of San Francisco, and takes that potential honor away from Sen. Leland Yee.

But, being that Maxwell joined the 5 member progressive core to stall the vote until Friday, there is a lot of wiggle room here.  The SFBG’s Tim Redmond sees the big problem with Lee being that we just don’t really know where he stands. Perhaps more information about that comes out today and tomorrow in time for the Friday vote, or perhaps this is all pushed to the new Board. Either way, this just seems to be San Francisco political theater taken to a new level.

I’ll admit, San Francisco is a pretty hard city to leave.  On several occasions, I’ve made the decision to stay in town.  Yet, then again, I didn’t run for statewide office, while Gavin Newsom did.  However, while all of the other statewide officers are being sworn in on Monday, he is going to wait until he’s good and ready:

Mayor Gavin Newsom left Tuesday morning with wife Jennifer and daughter Montana to Los Cabos, Mexico, and will return from vacation Saturday. But he won’t spend the weekend packing up for Sacramento – looks like he’ll be here well beyond his lieutenant governor’s Monday start date.

“He’s going to leave at some point,” assured Newsom’s spokesman, Tony Winnicker. “He will assume the office of lieutenant governor in January.”

Of course, there’s the big reason that he wants the new Board of Supervisors, to be sworn in Jan. 8, to pick his replacement. But there are also a lot of loose ends to tie up – and Newsom, busy burnishing his legacy, wants full credit. {SF Gate)

Of course, some of those loose ends are in fact something of a big deal.  However, I leave up to your judgment on whether it is a good idea or not to just cool your heels, and let the state linger.  To me, it seems a bit bizarre. After all, he fought for the past couple of years to get out of SF for Sacramento, but now he can’t seem to quit us.

As an aside, but the CW has the Mayor’s race down to Board President David Chiu and SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington at this point. I’m not entirely convinced that this delay really changes the calculus all that much, but there will likely be some machinations that could end up suprising the entire political community in San Francisco.  Perhaps, Mayor Newsom has some play left up his sleeve worthy of the Triple Play.

California will release an unprecedented number of prisoners back to their communities in the coming year, prodded by both the state budget crisis and the federal courts.

But those returning will be far less prepared to successfully re-enter society – due to severe cuts to rehabilitation programs in prison – and will be returning to counties that are far less prepared to assist them – due to massive budget deficits at the county level.

Many are concerned that this will lead to an increase in California’s already astronomical recidivism rate of 70%, costing the state even more in corrections spending and leading to further victimization in our communities.

What to do?

A new report by the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice (BCCJ) points to a proven solution that will decrease recidivism and enhance public safety with significant cost savings to the state: increasing employment opportunities for people with prior convictions.

As BCCJ’s Founding Executive Director, I was privileged to convene the wide-ranging project advisory board that developed the report’s timely recommendations. The group consisted of an extremely diverse group of “unlikely allies” – with representatives from law enforcement, advocacy groups, employers, and other stakeholders from across the political spectrum and from all corners of the state. As advisory board member and East Palo Alto Police Chief Ron Davis recently said: “It was just an outstanding group, and it opened my eyes: it really showed me that even with the diverse group that was there, law enforcement to prosecutors to advocates for the formerly incarcerated, how closely aligned we were.”

The BCCJ report points to solutions as simple as providing a California ID card to everyone leaving prison – a prerequisite for applying for most jobs. This low-cost measure has been passed by the legislature but was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. Governor-Elect Jerry Brown would be wise to call for and sign a new bill.

Other solutions do cost some money in the short run – but save many times that in the long run. Investing in prison vocational education programs has proven to save money: the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that every dollar invested netted nearly twelve dollars in return. But California has gone in the opposite direction, cutting vocational education and other rehabilitation programs in prison by $250 million – close to half of the total rehabilitation budget. Governor-Elect Brown has said he wants to avoid quick fixes and budget gimmicks that save money in one fiscal year only to cost the state much more down the line. That’s exactly what these recent cuts have done. Governor-Elect Brown should increase spending on vocational education and related programs and can count on future corrections savings as a result.  

At the county level, the BCCJ report calls for the development of re-entry councils such as those begun in San Diego under the leadership of District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, a BCCJ project advisory board member, and in San Francisco under the leadership of Attorney General-elect Kamala Harris and others, to better coordinate re-entry services at the local level. The councils cost little but can have a big impact.

Simply put, a small investment in helping formerly incarcerated people find jobs will have a huge payoff in reduced corrections costs, reduced recidivism and reduced crime in our communities.

As the BCCJ report shows, law enforcement leaders, advocates, and enlightened employers all understand this. Here’s hoping that our new Governor does too.

__

David Onek is a Senior Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, Host of the Criminal Justice Conversations Podcast, and a former Commissioner on the San Francisco Police Commission.

By now, you may have heard that much of San Francisco’s political leadership is moving on up in about a month or so.  But just how San Francisco moves on from Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris  (note: I worked on her campaign, but I have no inside details on this) is still up in the air.  The Wall Street Journal has something of a primer on the issues. It’s a decent enough start, portraying the various scenarios.  For a more entertaining take, watch the Necessary Conversation video on your right. But as somebody who is pretty involved in local politics, these are the decision points, as it were, that I see:

1) When will Gavin Newsom switch gigs?

Officially, Abel Maldonado’s term ends on January 3, like all other statewide officers. And that is the date that Gavin Newsom is supposed to be sworn in as LG.  However, he is trying to push back that date a few days in order to get his replacement selected by the new Board of Supervisors that is sworn in on Jan 7.

Of course, if he is able to push back his inauguration date, the other thing that would bring him is the ability to appoint the interim DA.  He’s hinted that he would respect the opinion of Kamala Harris on that pick, but would, if he makes that call, be the one with the final decision on DA.

At this point it isn’t totally clear whether he will push the date back, but, legally it looks like he might be able to do it.  That has to give it a pretty good chance of happening, I’d say it’s a 60% shot now.

2) Does anybody have 6 votes?

That is the big question, and right now, it seems that there are only a few people that could legitimately claim to have those votes. And one of them, Asm. Tom Ammiano, has said that he doesn’t want the job.  Sup. Chris Daly seems intent on twisting Ammiano’s arm into taking the gig.  State Sen. Mark Leno would probably have the votes as well, but as he was just appointed Senate Budget Chair, I’m not sure that he would want the gig either.  Sen. Leland Yee really, really wants the job, but doesn’t have the 6 votes.  City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Assessor Phil Ting are also running for mayor, but don’t appear to have the 6 votes necessary

Now, if nobody is able to get to 6 votes, the Board President automatically becomes acting mayor. Right now that is Sup. David Chiu.  Chiu is also the favorite to retain that position on the new board, and would thus get the mayor’s new gig.  Now, that wouldn’t make him “interim” mayor, but just acting. The big difference is that the acting mayor can be replaced by the board, whereas the interim mayor cannot. Chiu is also rumored to be considering a full run at the Mayor’s office if he is named to be interim Mayor.  And, running as something of an incumbent, he would at least be in a much stronger position than he is for that right now.

Oh, and just to make things more complicated, there have also been rumors that Chiu is interested in the DA position as well.

3) A care taker?

If the progressive bloc can’t get something together to choose an interim mayor, Sheriff Mike Henessey and SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington are rumored “caretaker” Mayors.  The election is just 11 months away, so a caretaker mayor would allow the voters to actually choose the next Mayor.

There are really too many variables to consider, but hopefully this flood of information will somewhat valuable as we watch to see the dominoes fall in San Francisco.

Dear Friend,

We had a great week. If you missed the news, Leland opened an exploratory committee to run for Mayor of San Francisco. The turnout at city hall was amazing.

Check out this short video we put together of Leland from Wednesday.(And the throng of reporters huddled around him)

There are also some great photos here, not to mention the press coverage in the Chronicle, LA Times, Sacramento Bee and on ABC 7 News.

Many of you have asked what you can do to help. Here are a few options:

1) Donate right now. Every dollar counts and we have a short window before the end of the year fundraising deadline to show financial strength.

2) Send out an email to your friends asking them to make a small contribution of $5, $10, or $20.

3) Invite your friends to join our Facebook page or sign up for our email list. We promise to have a real conversation, ask questions, not over email or post and we won’t give their names to anyone else.

Last but certainly not least, we are looking for folks in San Francisco to host house parties – if you want to host one, please let us know. You can call the office at 415-522-7304 or sign up here.

Thanks again for all your support.

Sincerely,

Jim Stearns

Campaign Manager

Leland Yee for Mayor