Ken Garcia

Further proof that English Lit just doesn't pay

It's hard to tell exactly who came up with this latest revenue generating plan for the UC system, but I'll guess that is wasn't somebody involved in the engineering business. That's because some nameless bean-counter has unearthed an idea that would require undergrad students studying engineering and business at UC campuses to pay up to $1,000 more per year than their fellow majors. And if you think the plan has caught fire, it's only because engineering and business students want the plan torched. It's one thing for graduate schools to add extra fees and quite another for undergrads to be hit with a surcharge, which is why it's never been done in California. Some UC officials say the...

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SF do-gooders plunge in to help out

The great beauty of San Francisco isn’t always found in its natural landscape, its penchant for tolerance and its embrace of things both wild and crazy. The city has a big heart, which it wears with a stylish handbag stuffed with cash. Despite the severe economic downturn and a huge jump in unemployment, those with a little extra continue to hand it over to causes great and many. Last week, Friends of the Children, a non-profit that provides teaching mentors to disadvantaged children from the first through the 12th grade, raised nearly $100,000 at an event in which former Mayor Willie Brown was honored and only slightly roasted by my old colleague, Chronicle columnist Phil...

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Who’s actually running police-chief search is anyone’s guess

If there were any more leaks inside the San Francisco Police Department, the top brass at the Hall of Justice would probably have to build an ark in order to survive. That will explain how the names of the finalists to be the next police chief have been gushing from all corners these days, some of them making their way into a local newspaper and the rest wagging from tongues throughout town. Out of respect for the Police Commission, which is handling the search, I’m not going to print the list of candidates, some of whom could possibly lose their jobs if their identities were revealed. But I will openly wonder why the commission, so publicly concerned about transparency, would not...

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Voters set to reject special election propositions

If you thought California was in for a bumpy budget ride before, just wait until Tuesday. It appears almost certain that voters are going to take out their anger toward the governor and the Legislature by rejecting a host of propositions designed to prop up the state’s sagging fiscal health. Polls show voters are furious with lawmakers for not dealing adequately with the budget mess. But if you think it’s bad now, just wait till the hysteria sets in if the state must cope with closing a $20 billion shortfall — which, in case you haven’t done the math, is going to be chiseled out in large chunks from the cities and counties already doing their own dialing for...

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Complaints Office defies logic with ‘Fajitagate’ pursuit

Whenever the Office of Citizen Complaints brings charges against some unlucky San Francisco police officer, the case should read like a drug ad with a list of all the potential harmful side effects. “These charges could cause symptoms of nausea, dizziness, fatigue, unexplained weakness or pain, and your skin and the whites of your eyes may turn yellow. If you notice any of these signs, you should call your lawyer immediately.” And to that, much-decorated 40-year-veteran police Capt. Greg Corrales could add a general if overwhelming sense of disbelief, followed by sharp pangs of surrealism. Still, there is something to be said of the overreaching tendencies of the Complaints...

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Final target for outgoing SFPD chief: Entire department

Those remaining backers of San Francisco police Chief Heather Fong insist she sometimes makes unpopular decisions because she does everything by the book. So now the question on everybody’s mind is: What book? Heather’s “Rules of Disorder”? Certainly it cannot be the one that contains legislation pushed by her own boss, Mayor Gavin Newsom? For months, he’s been trying to pass new laws allowing the Entertainment Commission to crack down on rogue nightclub operators whose establishments have a history of violence. Last week, in another deer-in-the-headlights moment, Fong and one of her commanders showed up at a Board of Supervisors hearing to announce that...

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L.A. top cop to S.F. makes no sense

The hot rumor recently circulating the Hall of Justice was that among the many candidates for The City’s next police chief was none other than William Bratton, the biggest name in law enforcement in the country. We can safely put this wishful thought to rest, since it’s probably never going to happen. For those not engaged in permanent crime watch, Bratton is the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He took the job in 2002, after serving as New York’s police commissioner under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bratton restored credibility in the LAPD, after a number of notorious scandals, and has received numerous awards for reducing crime in that Southern California...

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San Francisco could use Newsom’s Twittering prowess

For years now, I’ve been telling Mayor Gavin Newsom that he needs a speechwriter, someone who could steer him away, metaphorically, from his wonkish, geeky, fact-spouting ways. But then, who knew there would come a time when a new generation wanted their policy leaders to do their “vision thing” in 140 characters or less? That’s how crafty San Francisco’s mayor is — he knew technology would eclipse any need for old and tired gimmicks like colorful, enlightened prose, campaign bus-stop blitzes and energized public involvement. The real magic is now out there in the ether, on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and all the other fiber-optic weigh stations...

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San Francisco politics permeate Police Department

Perhaps it was good that departing San Francisco police Chief Heather Fong went years without requalifying to carry a firearm, considering her penchant for shooting herself in the foot. And Fong’s latest misfiring shows that she has truly become dangerous, further damaging the department, tarnishing the career of one of its most seasoned officers and leaving a mess for the future chief just as she prepares to leave. Sadly, that has not come soon enough, allowing Fong to show her true vengeful colors — none of which match well with navy blue. By demoting Deputy Chief Greg Suhr to captain this month because of a dubious interpretation of police reporting requirements, Fong...

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San Francisco politics permeate Police Department

Perhaps it was good that departing San Francisco police Chief Heather Fong went years without requalifying to carry a firearm, considering her penchant for shooting herself in the foot. And Fong’s latest misfiring shows that she has truly become dangerous, further damaging the department, tarnishing the career of one of its most seasoned officers and leaving a mess for the future chief just as she prepares to leave. Sadly, that has not come soon enough, allowing Fong to show her true vengeful colors — none of which match well with navy blue. By demoting Deputy Chief Greg Suhr to captain this month because of a dubious interpretation of police reporting requirements, Fong...

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Another 1906 earthquake survivor unearthed

As a journalist who has done scores of stories related to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, I can attest that every time you talk about one of the last survivors, another one emerges from the rubble. And that would be the case with one William Del Monte, who was born a few months before the mighty shake, and was here in person, if not in memory, for the big event. For those at home counting, that would make Del Monte 103, and he’ll always have a reason to remember the year of his birth. After I did a column this week about the remarkable Rose Cliver, who is two years older than Del Monte and was thought to be the last city native still around from that fateful April 18th day,...

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Quake survivor waits lifetime to revisit 1906 disaster

Rose Cliver insists that she does not have that good of a memory, but I do not think that’s quite right. I can barely remember what I did last week, and she’s just a tad fuzzy about what happened 103 years ago. Yet, she remembers clear enough: Cliver was on top of a Bernal Heights hillside with her father, brothers and sisters, watching most of downtown San Francisco burn to the ground. She was about 3 years old. Cliver is one of the last known survivors of the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, which, in her own inimitable words, makes her “an old bag.’’ More likely, Cliver is one of the healthiest 105-year-olds to be found, which is why she will be...

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Paradise is already paved

What’s become abundantly clear in the battle about a proposed modern-art museum in the Presidio is that even if the architect came up with the most beautiful design, if a quiet spot could be found for it and if a majority of San Franciscans voted in favor of it, a small band of activists would rather have a parking lot than a billion-dollar gift. This is what passes as reasonable discourse in San Francisco. The situation is not unlike the tiny group who opposed the underground parking garage in Golden Gate Park that serves two of The City’s newest and finest cultural attractions, which cost a number of individuals millions of dollars in legal fees. The garage was built and...

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Supervisor shows up colleagues by actually doing job

It’s a routine honed through time: Whenever I hit a pothole in San Francisco, I think of the Board of Supervisors. It’s not because of the brain injury I suffered right around the time Ed Jew was experiencing his (who knew a soccer ball could cause such damage?). And funny how I still love the game. But it definitely kept me out of politics — I have never given a speech without notes since, and even some of those are rambling. No, my board flashbacks have more to do with the fact that the teeth-jarring rides I experience across town every day are a direct result of inaction by supervisors on the very things they are elected to deal with. The board instead spends most...

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Local GOP: I don’t think so

Republicans in San Francisco are currently having a field day with their Democratic counterparts, and when was the last time anyone could say that? This week, members of the local GOP passed a resolution smacking down The City’s ultra-liberal ruling contingent for demanding that Mayor Gavin Newsom and members of the Police Department not enforce federal immigration laws for foreign nationals accused, or convicted, of felonies. Democrats described their action as a call for “due process.” Republicans correctly called it breaking the law. “We usually don’t make that big a deal about some of their actions, but in this case, since they specifically chose to...

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It’s time to show lawmakers who’s boss

Abdication is not high on the list for organizational leadership traits, but it is one characteristic that would aptly describe California’s current political status. As the state heads into the final stretch for a special election to try to stave off another budget disaster, members of the political parties are still warring about the merits of several special-election measures designed to pull California out of the economic abyss. That seems fitting for a state whose alleged leaders wasted months battling about the ideological value of tax hikes versus spending cuts as billions of dollars were being lost in the interim. The ballot measures, Propositions 1A through 1E on your...

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No federal laws in this land

San Francisco’s Democratic Party leadership met this week to grapple with thorny immigration issues. After two hours of finger-pointing, character assassination and nasty personal attacks, they essentially agreed that federal laws shouldn’t apply here, that felony convictions for illegal immigrants are fine, and that the mayor and the Police Department should redirect their agencies to, well, concentrate on other tasks. In other words, just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Some members of the Democratic County Central Committee have been on a tear of late accusing the Police Department of racial profiling and being heavy-handed in dealing with the (illegal)...

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Ultra-green building is no match for S.F. supervisors

Perhaps if the celebrated new building proposal for 110 The Embarcadero leaned a little more to the left, it would have matched the political sensibilities of the Board of Supervisors. But instead, the straightforward design did not meet their ideological criteria, allowing supervisors multiple reasons for why they put plans to build the greenest building in the West on hold last week, citing history, height limitations and creeping shadows among them. A majority of supervisors, however, failed to heed the more simplistic reasons why the existing building deserves its destructive date with destiny. It’s empty, it’s ugly and it’s unsafe, and about the only thing still...

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Public defender’s grandstanding masks office issues

Politicians grandstanding in public will almost certainly attract headlines. To that end, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi has been a busy man as of late. Adachi claims he wants money — not necessarily more scrutiny — which makes his recent actions rather curious, because some stunts have been known to be dangerous to your health. Adachi is on a mission to secure more funding for his department at a time when every agency in San Francisco is cutting back, the result of a projected $460 million deficit. He claims he needs $1.7 million for staffing — other departments are trimming 25 percent of their budgets — acting as a legal lone ranger who is neither...

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Niners punt stadium deal

As preseason moves go, the 49ers’ decision to make another pass at San Francisco for a possible stadium deal seems like a sign of desperation. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It might force the organization to actually get a deal done — something for which it has shown to be almost uniquely unqualified. Team officials insist that its desire to build a $900 million stadium next to the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara is still its primary option, a goal that is continually amusing. The team has spent two years now going back and forth with the city over plans for the stadium — and it’s no closer to a decision now than when talks...

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Hearst, Chron struggle to find steady footing

The newspaper industry is in trouble when arguably the best paper in the world has adopted a survival strategy it calls the "last man standing." That’s what The New York Times hopes to be, which is not necessarily good news for the rest of us. And the signs of trouble are coming so fast, the only thing more dangerous than being a journalist these days is being an investment banker. On Friday, a very fine newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, ceased publishing after 150 years. A death vigil is taking place at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which happens to be owned by the same company, Hearst Corp., that announced last week that unless it gets major concessions...

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Ken Garcia: Meter plan nearly expired

We will see how long the public gets a free ride, but it looks like my personal crusade to stop San Francisco officials from putting parking meters in our parks won’t be futile, at least not right now. Mayor Gavin Newsom told me this week that he is loath to put meters in Golden Gate Park, at the Palace of Fine Arts and elsewhere, but is still searching for ways to come up with revenue to offset the deep holes in all the city departments’ budgets. And at the Recreation and Park Department, the alternative is to lay off more recreation directors and gardeners — an idea that he hates even more. Yet, Newsom remembers well the public pounding he took during my last...

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Spoiler alert: S.F. voters will reject tax hikes

The liberal ruling majority in San Francisco may not believe in trickle-down economics, but based on the actions of state lawmakers last week in passing billions of dollars in budgetary tax hikes, it probably should. That’s because politicians only get so many bites of the apple, and the recent budget brawl pretty much chewed state taxpayers down to the core. For those still reeling from Sunday’s Academy Awards show, the $64 million question facing city officials is whether San Francisco residents will support a series of new local tax measures to bail the mayor and supervisors out of their long-standing, free-spending ways. And the answer in this corner is no, absolutely...

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Can gyms be preserved?

The plot lines in the battle to save and/or remake the Metro Theater on Union Street have become so convoluted it would take a team of rewrite specialists to fix them. The script centers on a charming but secretive owner who refuses to sell the grand showcase, even with the knowledge that his desire to transform it into a new enterprise is fraught with peril — politics being what they are in San Francisco. It features a community organization whose primary goal is to save neighborhood theaters, even though it’s likely it can’t save this one. But, it wants to preserve its historic integrity just the same. And as if the story needed to get any murkier, the Metro’s...

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Police chief search drumming through state

When it comes to filling high-level posts in city government, nothing in San Francisco is off the record, on the QT or very hush, hush. And that would certainly be the case with the potential list of successors for police chief, as names are already floating around City Hall that are generally far from the cast of the usual suspects. The ink hadn’t even dried on the contract for the firm conducting the national search for outgoing Chief Heather Fong’s replacement before some leaks surfaced about the top job — though, as usual, they are rife with rumor, speculation and the required degree of political spin. The appointment, more than any other in Mayor Gavin...

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Park that plan in the trash

I don’t know how many trees have been felled in the past two years to supply the paper for the press releases announcing the last thousand “green’’ initiatives touted by Mayor Gavin Newsom, but I do know that if he supports a blatantly dumb idea being considered by the Recreation and Park Commission, all of his eco-friendly credentials will be buried — by me. The commission is expected to vote today on a plan to install up to 2,000 parking meters in city parks — a plan that was rejected by supervisors in 2003 after residents rose up in anger to blast the proposal. There was a budget crisis then as there is now, but voters don’t want their elected...

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Parking battle amounts to dollars and sense

A parking space is so valuable in San Francisco that it’s no wonder what anyone would do to actually own a giant garage. And that’s at the heart of a case being heard in San Francisco Superior Court today that will likely resonate through certain revenue-anxious circles as an example of how The City is probably whiffing in its ability to take in money from a relatively easy source. For years now, officials have been talking about the under-regulated parking-garage industry, where rogue operators allegedly have been skimming millions off the books in the cash-heavy business. Attempts to clean up parking-garage oversight began in earnest about five years ago. But according to...

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Ken Garcia: State’s credit hits bottom

State lawmakers continue to show they’re living on borrowed time. As a result of their inaction in dealing with California’s ever-growing budget crisis, the state’s bond rating this week was dropped below every other state in the nation. That’s what an empty Treasury will get you. Standard & Poor’s lowered the rating below that of Louisiana — of all places — for the state’s $46 billion in general-obligation bonds. The rating reflects “our view of the lack of political progress around the budget negotiations” that is exacerbating the state’s cash holdings,” according to the report. The ongoing gridlock about ways...

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SFPD case exceeds foolish

I’m glad that as a journalist I’m afforded certain rights, because if I were a member of the San Francisco Police Department, I’d probably be brought up on charges. That’s the case involving Capt. Greg Corrales, a much-decorated, 40-year department veteran who, believe it or not, is still facing disciplinary charges stemming from the infamous “Fajitagate” case involving three off-duty officers who got in a brawl one night on Union Street — seven years ago. Corrales’ crime? He called the idea that officers got into a fight about a burrito “ludicrous.” All the evidence points out that the entire case was ludicrous, and every...

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San Francisco will lose special-election numbers game

I must admit to a lifetime of being math-challenged, but I understand enough to know when things don’t add up. And that would clearly explain the addition/subtraction equation being bandied about by the great minds on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, who are trying to match their X’s and O’s against the formidable onrush of the state of the economy. The supervisors, either this week or next, are prepared to vote up or down on a special election in June to give San Francisco voters the great opportunity to tax themselves silly in the worst recession since the late 1920s. Why people who are losing their jobs by the thousands, have seen their once-mighty...

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SFPD case exceeds foolish

I’m glad that as a journalist I’m afforded certain rights, because if I were a member of the San Francisco Police Department, I’d probably be brought up on charges. That’s the case involving Capt. Greg Corrales, a much-decorated, 40-year department veteran who, believe it or not, is still facing disciplinary charges stemming from the infamous "Fajitagate" case involving three off-duty officers who got in a brawl one night on Union Street — seven years ago. Corrales’ crime? He called the idea that officers got into a fight about a burrito "ludicrous." All the evidence points out that the entire case was ludicrous, and every single...

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S.F. deficit forces plans that will make you cringe

It’s been well established that 2009 will be known as the year of the big deficit, but it remains to be seen whether it will become a season of the creative solution. From new sought-after stimulus packages to less savory sales-tax hikes, almost every government entity in the country is looking for a way to produce revenue while grappling with major spending cuts. No states or cities have been spared, and throwing out ideas to see what sticks has become a familiar, if less than scientific, mantra. In San Francisco, where extreme, knee-jerk reactions greet every proposed plan, this should provide some insight and considerable mirth this year, because officials are contemplating...

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SFPD misses target with medals

When the four police officers who responded to the fatal tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo receive their medals of valor in February, it will be nearly 14 months since they shot and killed Tatiana on Dec. 25, 2007. Why did it take so long? Apparently, the Police Department and its chief, Heather Fong, didn’t want to draw attention to the incident. In some cases involving police-involved shootings, civil lawsuits can slow official commendations for officers. And sure enough, the family of the San Jose teenager that was mauled to death by the escaped tiger did file a lawsuit last month against The City and the zoo — a year after the much-publicized attack. But it still...

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Sea of change greeted by sea of believers

In the era of 24-hour cable news talking-head punditry, it was only a matter of time before the sublime dissolved into the ridiculous. And that would accurately describe the weekend topic at Fox News, wondering if the honeymoon period for soon-to-be President Barack Obama was already finished. I don’t claim to be the world’s most logical person, but I would argue that a honeymoon can’t be over until a marriage has taken place. And while I recognize that Fox has its own particular agenda, it would be hard to suggest that arguably the most popular person on the planet right now is overloaded with baggage. When you get Bruce Springsteen and U2 to show up for the party...

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One man’s grand design

A small alley is probably not the most artistic way to honor San Francisco’s most creative and enduring architect, but then again, Timothy Pflueger didn’t start out building skyscrapers. Still, it does seem a modest tribute to the man who gave the Bay Area its most majestic theaters and brought the art deco movement to glittering heights. Yet, it’s at least fitting that when San Francisco officials soon recast Chelsea Place behind the stately 450 Sutter St. building to Timothy Pflueger Place, the street will lead directly into one of the many historic buildings for which the city native is known. For that we can thank local journalist Therese Poletti — a tech...

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Dawning of new age in S.F. politics?

One small development in San Francisco could shed some light on whether the new Board of Supervisors is much different from the old, which often seemed more taken with itself than the good of The City. And that would be on its desire to steer clear of an old battle in North Beach that was finally decided by the Planning Commission last week — one that would demonstrate whether the board is firmly independent or fairly reminiscent of its predecessor. The early signs are hopeful. For 14 years, the Pagoda Theater in North Beach has stood empty — unless you want to welcome the site of the area pigeons’ favorite dropping ground as an experimental aviary. Developers have...

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Now that board president is chosen, let the real jarring begin

It took an intriguing seven rounds of voting before the Board of Supervisors elected its new president Thursday, but the real jockeying took place behind the scenes the past few days, as board members bartered for their person to lead the merry band. There were many meetings, much hustling between offices, impassioned pleas far into the night and considerable bruising of egos. As one supervisor told me: “I think it’s fair to say that many Brown Act and Sunshine Ordinance laws were broken.” But for all the horse trading, the ascension of rookie Supervisor David Chiu to board president always came down to one vote — Ross Mirkarimi’s — based on the...

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Sam's Grill has an enduring recipe for success

When it comes to saving local landmarks, I’ve produced a fair to middling record through the years, mostly to the credit of the neighborhood activists and preservationists who led the ground campaigns. That may help explain why I’m getting in the front of one crusade early, to make sure it doesn’t go the way of other San Francisco institutions that have now fallen into the dustbin of history. And that would be a desire to keep Sam’s Grill on Bush Street exactly where it is and exactly the way it is for another 100 years or so, for future generations to see what a timeless city classic was all about. Now this may seem a little strange since Phil Lyons, owner of...

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Whoa! Don't put that museum in my backyard

San Francisco produced further evidence this week that its residents will fight about anything. Would you want a new museum donated to The City in a lovely park setting filled with $1 billion worth of art from a cherished private collection? Not if it means giving up a 7-acre parking lot that soldiers used to march on. One thing was made crystal clear at the latest meeting held by the Presidio Trust regarding Gap founder Don Fisher’s proposed modern art museum at the former Army base: Some people not only want to push the plan out of their neighborhood, they don’t want it in any neighborhood. It’s NIMBYism straight out of the BALCO laboratory. The only problem for...

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Mayor misses point in crime webisode

In case you haven’t heard, the ridicule Mayor Gavin Newsom received about his geeky digital departure — a lengthy YouTube adventure with the State of The City address — was completely misplaced. At least that’s what our resident chief wonk told me when I ran into him last weekend at a holiday art show, after needling him for making one of the longest movies filmed in San Francisco since Francis Ford Coppola was at his artistic peak. The big picture the media missed, according to Mr. Talking Point, was that the 7½ hours of footage were not supposed to be viewed in their entirety; it was set up in segments so that whatever topic you were interested in, you...

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Arnie demands a budget

If the rules for the state’s lawmakers aren’t crystal clear, they should be: Thou shalt not introduce any new measures till they come to grips with the budget catastrophe. So while we can appreciate those efforts at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s time to put everything else aside and get serious. California currently has an $11.2 billion gap between revenue and expenditures. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a savings plan last month that should cover about $9 billion. But according to the latest estimates, if lawmakers fail to act on the budget in the next few weeks, the savings will decrease by $2 billion. In other words, get cracking Jerry Hill, D-San...

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Economy got you down? Get a nose job

The latest sign of the apocalypse has come by way of an overzealous doctor and his hyperventilating publicist, who have teamed to bring us the most dubious announcement of the season so far. The New York firm of KMR Communications sent out a notice this week proclaiming that with Americans trying to deal with career choices in a “harsh” economy, experience is the key factor. But then there is also one’s appearance. And that’s why Livermore Valley-based Dr. Steven Williams is recommending people have plastic surgery. “As jobs are cut, Americans go under the knife,” according to the press release. “Looking your best is not necessarily vain —...

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Arnie demands a budget from legislators

If the rules for the state’s lawmakers aren’t crystal clear, they should be: Thou shalt not introduce any new measures till they come to grips with the budget catastrophe. So while we can appreciate those efforts at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s time to put everything else aside and get serious. California currently has an $11.2 billion gap between revenue and expenditures. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a savings plan last month that should cover about $9 billion. But according to the latest estimates, if lawmakers fail to act on the budget in the next few weeks, the savings will decrease by $2 billion. In other words, get cracking Jerry Hill, D-San...

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GavinTV airing on a computer near you

Now that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has decided to unveil his latest State of the City address on YouTube, perhaps it is time to suggest the next natural progression: his own reality show. Based on the premise that anyone might spend nearly eight hours watching the mayor pontificate about his views on The City, it might be the only reality check we get in the next few months. I realize that Newsom wants to put new controls on media access, given the little “speech that got away’’ that was used to promote the ads for the state proposition banning same-sex marriage, but this latest high-tech turn may be a tad over-the-top. Tina Fey on YouTube makes sense. Newsom on...

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Barry Bonds has my vote for Hall of Fame

It’s never too early to hand out dubious-achievement awards, so here’s a guess that the most tired story of next year has already emerged: Barry Bonds’ federal perjury trial for allegedly lying about steroid use. Bonds is a fairly pathetic figure who cheated, but judging from readers’ comments about the latest round of legal juggling for the March trial, most people think the time and money spent by federal prosecutors to nail Bonds for his comments to a grand jury has been a major waste. The all-time MLB home run king essentially drummed himself out of baseball, and it’s pretty clear that many fans don’t miss his presence. The trial — even if...

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Courts helping you avoid jury duty

In recent years, San Francisco’s courts have had a familiar look to them: They were filled with the puzzled faces of the same people, wondering why they got called for jury duty so frequently. It was an experience I had often enough that it led me to write about it, which led to another kind of summons from the presiding judge of the Superior Court, who felt compelled to explain why The City’s jury pool was so overtaxed. San Francisco was unique in some ways because of its size, makeup and caseload, and court officials were trying very hard to fix it, Superior Court Judge David Ballati told me, so there would be less repeat business. Sure enough, less than two years later,...

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Reliable tax source packing its luggage

San Francisco has long prided itself on its uncanny penchant for bucking trends — socially, politically and economically. And for The City to have any hope of avoiding another giant budget hit, we better hope that’s one trend that continues. In the last few years, city officials have managed to live in their protective bubble because San Francisco’s primary cash engine — tourism — has been purring along with almost stunning efficiency. Even while the economic downturn has increasingly hit other cities and counties during the last year, San Francisco has been able to turn its reputation as one of the world’s top destination spots into a nearly...

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Hold on to your aspirations

So many local officials are positively giddy about the presidential election results that it appears they’re going to see if President-elect Barack Obama’s coattails extend all the way to the Left Coast. That appears to be the case with San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, the ambitious, media-friendly prosecutor who was in the Obama camp from the beginning and is clearly feeling the power of change. Harris announced that she’s interested in a run for state attorney general, a seat currently held by professional pol Jerry Brown, who has his sights on the governor’s seat. They may all be getting just a tad ahead of themselves, however, since their...

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Election reruns must stop

If there’s one thing that stands out in the local elections this year, it’s the sameness of it all. Whether it was another literal power grab by San Francisco supervisors to take control of the electrical utility switch, parental notification for pregnant teens or, sadly, another successful attempt to ban same-sex marriage, this year’s initiative slate proved that propositions, like so many things in life, don’t improve with age. So perhaps it’s time to send a message to our elected officials and those forces who refuse to accept the signals from the electorate: enough already. Besides enduring one of the longest and most contentious state and national...

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Not S.F.’s Grand Old Party

Members of the extreme left wing of the San Francisco Democratic Party like to toss out the “R’’ word when assailing their opponents since Republicans are considered part of the axis of evil here. Yet what happens when one of their favored candidates actually has links to the Republican Party? Silence. In some places, this is known as hypocrisy. In San Francisco, it’s called the pursuit of power. David Chiu, who calls himself the most “progressive’’ candidate in the District 3 supervisor race to represent the area that includes North Beach and Russian Hill, is the proud co-founder and chief operating officer of Grassroots Enterprise, an internet...

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Guess who foots bill for election campaigns?

Nasty, mean-spirited, deceitful — it’s been a typical San Francisco election year, filled with the same type of rhetorical hysteria that befits our wide-eyed, true-believing kingdom. And I hope you’re enjoying every moment of the big show, because, after all, you’re paying for it. San Francisco is on the brink of setting a record this year for shelling out money for publicly financed campaigns for elected office — a circumstance generated by the fact that its political aspirants can’t get enough money to compete in races through the standard methods. City voters opened up their treasury to them in 2000, and the spending has begun in earnest —...

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A little help slogging through The City's propositions

Holding an election in San Francisco is kind of like throwing a swing dance in a minefield: Danger signs should be posted everywhere. Instead, we get disingenuous sloganeering, hit pieces, general shiftiness and enough slate mailers to keep the fireplace glowing through winter. And then, of course, there are the outright lies accompanied by happy faces and the promise of a new tomorrow. There is a reason there’s something called an election-year promise. That’s why we decided to try to help steer voters through the muck of this year’s election by crafting a handy-dandy voter guide on the local propositions and key endorsements to help you see who is pushing the agenda....

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Studios happy to be open

With two more weekends to go in the largest art event in the United States, people involved in San Francisco’s Open Studios are asking whether politics can ever be separated from art in this contentious city. The answer: not completely, but the backdrop is looking a lot brighter. Earlier this year, a measure put on the ballot by Supervisor Chris Daly threatened to blow up a decadelong plan to build a new housing development at the Hunters Point Shipyard — a plan that also included a new community arts center and replacement studios for the 300 artists who lease space at the former naval outpost. Voters overwhelmingly rejected Daly’s ploy, and the architectural plans...

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Obscure candidates are still candidates

Running for office in San Francisco is not just a job, it’s an adventure — an experience that some people feel compelled to have no matter the outcome. Yet in the absence of a real opposition party in The City, it’s often tough to get heard above the usual chatter, or to break through the power structures that control local elections, which is exactly how the usual suspects become the usual suspects. But just because someone is a long shot doesn’t mean they’re not a good candidate, or that they shouldn’t be able to air and grapple with the same gripes felt by their fellow citizens, who just might throw votes their way if their voices were ever...

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S.F. Filipino club backs Daly PAC

Funny things tend to happen in San Francisco around election time: Hundreds of ballots show up floating in the Bay, dead people end up at the polls and desperate campaigners look to find new voters in halfway houses and jails. So it’s probably not out of keeping with that trend that a mystery is unfolding over at The City’s Filipino American Democratic Club, where the checks and balances seem to be somewhat off kilter. Recently, after the club endorsed her, school board candidate Emily Murase sent in a check to get on the club’s slate mailer. Shortly after, Murase was informed by Roy Recio, who’s in charge of the club’s political action committee, or PAC,...

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Power to the people? Not with this board ...

San Francisco residents are used to getting a jolt at election time and this year’s ballot promises to be no different. If many of the initiatives and the campaigns behind them seem familiar, it’s because they are, since activists in The City by the Bay seem to think they can wear down the electorate with repeated ballot attempts after previous ones have failed. Can’t get enough funding for affordable housing through normal legislative channels? Slap it on the ballot. Can’t stop spending habits that leave San Francisco with a whopping annual budget deficit? Let’s hit property owners with a transfer tax. And so it is with the latest attempt to take over...

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Mar targeted by builders

We know the foreign-language press can buoy the campaigns of candidates in some districts, but can it torpedo them as well? That’s the question a lot of people are asking in San Francisco’s District 1 supervisor race in the Richmond now that “progressive” candidate Eric Mar has run afoul of a group of Asian builders who have taken out several ads in the Sing Tao Daily newspaper attacking him for his intemperate remarks on project labor agreements. In June, Mar voted to support a new union labor contract while serving on the school board, a move largely seen by independent, minority builders as part of a trend that makes them uncompetitive for city jobs. The...

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Hardly a bad word to say about music fest

When he got to his office Monday after hosting what has become one of the most unique music festivals on the globe, San Francisco financier Warren Hellman said he had 17 CDs on his desk from bands hoping to crack next year’s lineup. If this weekend’s show is any indication, a few of them probably will, because this was the least Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival of the preceding seven — which is to say that Eugene Hutz, the Ukrainian refugee who fronts Gypsy punk-rock band Gogol Bordello that played an edgy late afternoon set, seemed perfectly at home. “The variety of music was amazing and it was really well-organized for such a huge event,’’ said...

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Sandoval lacks judgment

I’ve covered politics for more than 20 years, which is to say that I’m used to backhanded and unseemly acts from officeholders scrambling to hold on to their jobs or move to the next one. But I have to admit that San Francisco Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval has achieved new levels of shamelessness — which, in this city, is really saying something. Sandoval, who is termed out this year, is desperately running for the Superior Court judge seat occupied by incumbent Thomas Mellon. And as I’ve pointed out several times in this space, he has worked hard to earn the “not qualified’’ rating given to him by the San Francisco Bar Association. He’s...

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Museum nearly out of woods

For the thousands of people who will flock to the new California Academy of Sciences this weekend, the focus of attention will be on the spectacular building with its living roof, a 90-foot dome holding a breathtaking rain forest and a coral reef that seems anything but artificial. There will be some familiar sights among the new trappings — alligators near the entrance, a center stage for the colony of African penguins and a long, rectangular hall featuring the academy’s beloved dioramas. But one of the most remarkable aspects of the new museum is something that won’t be on display. It’s the fact that it was nearly drummed out of its location by the town’s...

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Fight against substance abuse has demanding requirements

At a time when most education facilities are still welcoming students, one just celebrated its annual graduation. But then, San Francisco’s best-known rehabilitation center is not like other places, as its commencement ceremony at the Palace of Fine Arts showed Tuesday. For 39 years, Walden House has been helping alcoholics and drug addicts get on the road to recovery. Nearly 200 “graduates” were honored this week for achieving extended sobriety at Walden House’s five San Francisco residential-treatment facilities — and there were enough rock-bottom stories and tearful tributes to fill a weeklong segment on “Oprah.” These are heady times for...

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Supervisors don’t rescue

When San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly gets a vision, it usually means it’s time to run for cover. And, sure enough, that’s what a majority of his colleagues did when he first erupted with his idea to turn the San Francisco Zoo into an “animal sanctuary” — his plan to capitalize on the tragic tiger mauling at the facility last Christmas. The board finally killed the plan this week after months of debate — following a long speech in which Daly described his idea as a “vision document” for the zoo’s future, which was an incomplete thought that zoo backers said would result in a loss of accreditation and future closure. It’s...

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Cannabis clubs creating chaos iin neighborhoods

The proliferation of medical marijuana clubs in San Francisco has come with a price, particularly in neighborhoods such as the Lower Haight and the North Mission, which are glutted with them. The Board of Supervisors has done its best to ignore the problems — essentially telling law-enforcement agencies not to mess with cannabis dispensaries. Recent events, however, underscore why The City needs to reconsider its “no look, no hands” policy. Last weekend, 23-year-old Royshawn Holden was shot and killed outside the Mr. Nice Guy pot club at Duboce Avenue and Valencia Street. Police said a gunman approached Holden and another man after they exited the club, robbed them and...

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Park reaping fruit of collaborative efforts

For years, Crocker Amazon was one of the most neglected parks in San Francisco, a large series of fields that put ballplayers somewhere between a hard rock and a marshy bog — depending on the season. What a difference a little time, a lot of effort and a fair amount of cash can make. On Sunday, San Francisco will officially reopen a new, 4-acre stretch of the park, unveiling what will be the finest collection of turf soccer fields in The City’s history. And for someone who has been complaining about the state of San Francisco’s playing fields for more than a decade, I can say that Crocker Amazon is a stunning testament to what can happen when the right people make the...

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Police chief escapes mayor’s scrutiny again

For the simple reason that Mayor Gavin Newsom pulled the wrong trigger last week, San Francisco is about to embark on another needless national search for someone to run its city parks system. Yet what Newsom really needs to find is a personnel manager, to help save him from himself. Sports fans have come to learn through the years that some of the best trades are the ones that are never made. Newsom has now found a solution in search of a problem — never a good thing when you’re trying to show the world (and would-be donors) what governing is all about. By showing Recreation and Park General Manager Yomi Agunbiade the door last week (officially, he jumped from the ledge and...

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Keep trafficking out of city

It took nearly two years for authorities in Berkeley to extricate its fragrant tree-huggers from their lofty heights on the UC campus, pretty much cementing the city’s place as the wackiest in the West. But wait — don’t count San Francisco out — it’s about to give Berkeley another run for its (streetwalking) money. Four years ago, Berkeley voters soundly rejected a measure to decriminalize prostitution, which would have directed cops and prosecutors to stop enforcing state laws on prostitution. Now, the same ballot plan goes before San Francisco voters in November under the guise of Proposition K, brought to us by the same sex-trade worker who saw another...

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Tale from ‘Heart’ shows the love between parent and child

When my father died three years ago, I tried to explain to those assembled at his funeral how it was that a man so physically strong for more than 85 years could wither away so rapidly. The car industry — in which my father worked for more than 40 years selling Oldsmobiles — provided the answer. General Motors had recently announced that they would no longer manufacture that car division. “General Motors,’’ I solemnly announced, “killed my father. The news must have hit him like a Delta 88.’’ But it was actually the ravages of a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, an acute debilitation of the brain, that deprived him of most of...

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Movie about the Merry Pranksters may have missed the bus

The Pranksters seemed a lot merrier in the Day-Glo hues of the ’60s, but even 40 years after it was published, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” remains arguably the best book about the drug-drenched period and the clearest snapshot of San Francisco’s emergence as the cradle of hippiedom. New Journalism auteur Tom Wolfe placed himself in the middle of the feathered pack of anti-establishment adventurers who were led by Ken Kesey, as they traveled the country in their neon International Harvester school bus giving the word “trip” a whole new meaning. Wolfe used his famous punctuation excesses to help him provide some visual interpretation of the drug...

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Voice of The City: Turn up the volume on concerts in S.F.

It wasn’t exactly the Summer of Love remix, but San Francisco got a taste of its past recently and it shouldn’t be a hard act to follow. That is, if The City can cope with its cranky, grumbling ways. Just more than a week ago, San Francisco played host to the first Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, a three-day gathering that brought an estimated 130,000 people to the forested backdrop of Golden Gate Park. More than 65 bands — including mega-acts such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Radiohead — played at the festival, which was reminiscent of some of the scenes from the 1960s and ’70s when bands such as Jefferson Airplane regularly played in the...

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Low profile suits Newsom

It’s easy to see why critics of San Francisco’s mayor tend to be so vociferously over-the-top — even when he loses, he wins. Gavin Newsom has essentially been relegated to the sidelines for the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week — many appearances, but no floor speech — since party leaders are loath to publicize the same-sex marriage issue front and center and provide fodder for Republicans to bandy about the “San Francisco values” thing. Yet Newsom somehow got picked by the editors of Time magazine to be one of just five “hotshots” to watch in its special issue on the Democrats. The magazine’s take: If you...

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Fault Lines: Our great state’s popularity contest

If Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval somehow makes it onto the superior court bench in November, he may want to install a weather vane in his chambers so he can note the direction of the wind before he has to make a decision. Right now his index finger must be getting tired. Sandoval, who has recused himself from voting on controversial issues lately because it might provide fodder for his more experienced opponent, Judge Thomas Mellon, this week criticized the use of gang injunctions, shortly after saying that they might be needed in his district to fight violent crime. The flip-flop apparently occurred after some young nonprofit activists, who oppose the use of gang injunctions, showed up at...

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Fault Lines: Sandoval resorting to bench warming

If Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval somehow makes it onto the superior court bench in November, he may want to install a weather vane in his chambers so he can note the direction of the wind before he has to make a decision. Right now his index finger must be getting tired. Sandoval, who has recused himself from voting on controversial issues lately because it might provide fodder for his more experienced opponent, Judge Thomas Mellon, this week criticized the use of gang injunctions, shortly after saying that they might be needed in his district to fight violent crime. The flip-flop apparently occurred after some young nonprofit activists, who oppose the use of gang injunctions, showed up at...

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Fault Lines: Daly’s badge plan another blunder

Of all the dumb proposals that have been pushed by Supervisor Chris Daly lately, few have reached the level of silliness as his plan to make lobbyists wear badges while doing their thing at City Hall. The proposal came out some time ago, when Daly was swearing at consultants at public hearings and getting himself into all kinds of trouble and newspaper stories. Yet Daly socked away a lot of money from those lawyers, lobbyists and developers during his re-election campaign, and his colleagues — at least seven of them — saw through the ruse and rejected the idea this week. Perhaps he would have had better luck if he had suggested they don love beads, like the kind Daly wore to...

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Fault Lines: Power-packed progressives?

The very same people who pushed ranked-choice voting on San Francisco residents are doing their best to make sure it doesn’t apply to themselves. The so-called “progressives,’’ who recently took control of the local Democratic Party, took the unusual step of endorsing only one candidate in upcoming supervisor’s races — with one exception, adding North Beach activist Denise McCarthy as a second seed to their list. Despite pleas from more moderate members to embrace some of the many qualified female candidates, the committee decided to go its own ham-handed way, turning the ideal of a “big tent’’ for Democratic candidates into more of a...

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Garcia: Resignation request causes wrong uproar

Perhaps it’s not such a good thing that Mayor Gavin Newsom has no viable candidate campaigning against him this year, because even running against himself, he’s not doing so well.The favorite mantra of Newsom’s critics is that the mayor governs via press release, a style-versus-substance swipe that most voters have set aside. But this week Newsom found out that even if you are alone in a race, it’s best not to get too far in front of yourself.With his eye clearly on the future, Newsom told his senior staffers Friday......

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Garcia: 9/11 lesson - be vigilant

You can push it to the back of your mind, but there’s no escaping the date on the calendar — Sept. 11, for most Americans the singular news event of their lives.Yet as much as the images of the worst terrorist attack on American soil remain vivid, time has removed some of the emotional resonance that greeted the date in the previous five years, in much the same way that all traumatic incidents lose their ability to command public focus as the years roll on.Instead, the discussion of the Sept.......

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Garcia: Hsu saga takes on a bizarre new twist

If state and federal authorities didn’t take Democratic wheeler-dealer Norman Hsu seriously before, perhaps this is a good time to start.The Bay Area’s own international man of mystery has raised his profile in a serious way now that he’s apparently gone on the run from prosecutors for the second time after failing to make a court appearance in Redwood City on Wednesday, less than a week after posting $2 million bail. San Mateo Superior Court Judge Robert Foiles ordered Hsu’s bail forfeited, but money appears to be the least of......

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Garcia: The voodoo that Hsu does

It was like old home week in the Bay Area — aging hippies congregating en masse for the Summer of Love anniversary, some of the great local ’60s rock bands making an appearance and the return of Norman Hsu to the arms of the local legal system.Only Hsu’s return was unexpected, since he’s been on the lam for 15 years from state authorities after pleading no contest to felony grand theft for defrauding local Peninsula investors of $1 million. And by the time his days in court are over, someone......

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Garcia: Fisher is king of his art

When you can afford to have an original sculpture by Alexander Calder unassumingly taking up space on your office table, as Gap founder Don Fisher does, you can also afford to be more than a bit understated."It’s a good collection,’’ he says of the contemporary art pieces he and his wife Doris have been amassing for the last three decades. "And I don’t want to see it in the basement.’’That, in a nutshell, is the crux of his decision to build his own museum in the Presidio and finally put......

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Garcia: Mayoral race an only-in-S.F. circus

There are some niggling questions about the upcoming mayoral race in November, including whether Mayor Gavin Newsom will continue trying to raise money or bother to debate against a bunch of no-name candidates.But among the queries no one has raised is exactly how a homeless taxi driver managed to find $5,000 to get in the race, or whether the nude activist will uncover more than the truth before the campaign is finished.It’s remarkable really that in a city in which politics seeps into every nook, cranny and appointment, not a......

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Garcia: Cabbie case highlights S.F.’s taxi scene

About the only thing harder than finding a taxi in some parts of San Francisco is uncovering a cabdriver or company that will voluntarily relinquish their operating permit.Just ask the lawyers now representing William Wieland’s former taxi company. Normally I’d say just ask Mr. Wieland himself, but since he died more than 15 months ago, that’s no longer possible.But if you want to see a case of how far individuals and taxi companies will go to hold on to the precious "medallions" that allow them to operate a cab in......

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Garcia: Twisted scandal may have another chapter

It can’t be easy trying to take the high road when all the attention is focused elsewhere.Yet that mostly isolated perch is where Ruby Rippey-Tourk, San Francisco’s scarlet woman, finds herself today, purposely removed from all the buzz and the rumors she helped create when news of her affair with Mayor Gavin Newsom broke earlier this year — a scandal that threatened to rock The City’s political establishment and shoot down several high-flying careers.But a funny thing happened along the course of predicted consequences: It didn’t turn out the way......

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Garcia: S.F. politicians tell cops to 'walk the line'

If our elected officials are so insistent on trying to control staffing issues for the San Francisco Police Department, perhaps they should consider moving to the district stations to get a better check on reality.Then they might realize the folly of insisting on making personnel decisions based on political expediency rather than on available personnel. That ill-advised strategy resulted in the transfer of an extremely competent and highly respected police captain last week from arguably the busiest and most difficult district station after he had the temerity to tell community......

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Garcia: Urban geography rules pot-club politics

You don’t have to be an aficionado of hookah pipes to understand that when it comes to pot clubs in San Francisco, not all neighborhoods are created equal.That explains the preponderance of cannabis service centers in the Mission district, the Haight and South of Market and a dearth of "pharmacies’’ in the parts of San Francisco where most people actually reside.But it doesn’t spell out why neighborhoods can’t stop some clubs from operating in one area, yet have no problem shutting down clubs in another. If you were to suggest......

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Garcia: We'll miss you, Pete

The feedback from readers and longtime listeners on Pete Wilson’s death is like a mirror image of his career. They praise him, thank him, eviscerate him and say how much they will miss him.In death, as in life, Wilson, the consummate newsman, can still stir the waters.I was stunned and saddened to hear of Wilson’s passing over the weekend because he was far too young, far too exuberant and far too valuable a presence in the Bay Area journalism community. I can’t say I knew him privately, but I knew......

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Garcia: Denial at City Hall

It’s refreshing to know that San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew can gather so many supporters to protest his "unfair’’ treatment by The City’s legal officials. But I still don’t think it’s going to be a winning strategy in his case to try to tell a judge that home is where the heart is.The exhibition staged by his friends and allies outside the Hall of Justice on Monday showed once again that Jew knows a thing or two about San Francisco politics. If only he were as familiar with some of......

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Garcia: L.A. mayor’s ‘Summer of Love’ scandal

When will politicians ever learn that if they want to toss a grenade, they shouldn’t be standing in a mine field?That’s pretty much where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found himself last week, publicly acknowledging that he was having an affair with a TV reporter who was knee-deep in her own ethical quagmire, since she was the on-air commentator who announced that the mayor was splitting with his longtime wife Corina last month (though not for whom).This story has political overtones for voters here in the Bay Area and throughout......

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Garcia: He who brings City Hall to a grinding halt

Since we’re hosting the All-Star Game tonight, I thought it might be appropriate to single out a midyear performance of someone who never stops, who swings for the fences and who hits to all departments.And that would be San Francisco’s record-breaking record searcher, Kimo Crossman, the vexatious Sunshine Ordinance filer, who can stop whole agencies with a single request.Normally, I am loathe to give column space to people who actually thrive on negative publicity, but in a town chock-full of folks who have nothing better to do than try to......

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Garcia: S.F.'s transit obsession

As an N-Judah streetcar approached her stop at Ninth and Irving this week, Debbi Sims said what a lot of people in her neighborhood have been thinking the past few months."Victory," she said. "Victory at last."With relatively little fanfare — and not too many delays — Sims’ Muni Metro line and the J-Church line returned to their old routes this week, ending a period of simmering frustration with city transportation officials who tinkered with commute lines when they opened the new T-Third streetcar in April. For Sims, it meant one......

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Garcia: The neighborhood park closes - what now?

From the outside, they look just like average parks and playgrounds, with random assortments of courts and clubhouses that would hardly raise a question about how and when they got there.But San Francisco’s recreation facilities reveal a lot more about the about the makeup and the character of The City itself. They are gathering spots for those attracted by individual interests or like-minded souls who turn neighborhood parks into a haven away from home, a sanctuary for hoopsters and tennis hacks who spend decades returning to the neighborhood’s run-down concrete......

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Garcia: Newsom sits back as Ed Jew saga plays

The public calls for embattled Supervisor Ed Jew to resign are increasing, and the pressure certainly will mount in the next two weeks, as observers wait to see whether federal prosecutors will be adding to the charges he already faces.But if you’re waiting for the mayor to join in the fray anytime soon, other than to request that the supervisor respond to the official inquiries, a word of advice — don’t hold your breath.Judging from my discussion with Newsom about Jew’s situation, the mayor is extremely reluctant to interject himself......

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Garcia: Daly's cocaine smear was cry for attention

Not many people would have thought that awkward San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly could create the political version of limbo — a dizzying public dance to see how low you can go.And right now, Daly is so low that he could play handball against the sidewalk — you know, like the ones he wants to take money away from for repairs because street and curb maintenance are not part of what he considers basic government services.Daly, in his latest cry for help, did a full-frontal flop into his favorite mud......

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Garcia: The courtship of Art Agnos

Politics is such a bruising sport, you have to wonder how many people would jump back into it 16 years after leaving office.But that’s where former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos finds himself these days, with a chorus of people urging him to go into a battle against a man 30 years younger, if only for the reason that nobody else will.I had a long lunch recently with Agnos, who looks very much like someone who is enjoying semi-retirement. He is fit and tan and relaxed, he goes golfing whenever......

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Garcia: Board is wrong address for Ed Jew

The question is no longer whether Ed Jew will remain a supervisor in San Francisco, since the evidence overwhelmingly suggests he resided in another city while running for public office. Now it’s just a matter of who will get him first — the civil courts, the district attorney or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.And while we’re pondering such intricacies, all thoughts lead to the same conclusion: Did he believe he could do it out of arrogance or stupidity?From what I can gather after talking with those involved in the various......

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Garcia: Ed Jew becomes even more of a mystery

If someone were taking odds eight months ago on which San Francisco official would become the talk of the town, I doubt Supervisor Ed Jew would have even made the list. But now he’s in a world all his own, and that’s not a good place to be.Today, Jew is facing felony charges — nine of them — for allegedly lying under oath and falsifying documents that claimed he lived in a Sunset district house when he was running for office last year. The charges, brought Tuesday by District Attorney......

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Garcia: The Daly show never ceases to amuse

There’s an old adage in politics that one should never get in the way of opponents when they’re making fools of themselves.And certainly no one has ever stirred that sentiment more than San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who makes all of his many opponents look better just by the sheer measure of his existence.But despite our many differences, I cannot and could not ever be Daly’s enemy for the simple reason that he has provided me so much amusement and column fodder over the years. It’s the journalistic equivalent of the......

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Garcia: News can lose you

It’s far too premature to write about the demise of the San Francisco Chronicle, but it may be fair to say that the moves taking place over at the once-mighty newspaper’s headquarters these days have a faint murmur of a death march.Highly respected editors and reporters some consider among the most talented at the paper are being called into meetings and then quietly escorted from the building at Fifth and Mission streets, leaving those behind in shocked silence. It is the grim, somewhat inevitable consequence of an organization that lost......

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Garcia: Would you vote for parking?

Anyone who has spent even a short weekend in San Francisco knows that when it comes to finding parking, drivers are often driven to distraction.Downtown, in the Marina, in the Mission or even the Inner Sunset, parking has become as elusive as reasoned political debate. And it’s not an illusion — the California Department of Transportation estimates that San Francisco has lost 10,000 parking spaces in the last seven years.That will explain why a measure to increase the number of parking spots, particularly in commercial residential areas, is cruising toward......

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Garcia: One that got away

In the 17 months she served as acting San Francisco public schools superintendent, Gwen Chan found out one irrefutable fact that has marked the tenure of every recent city school chief — it’s not a job, it’s an adventure.And sadly, the one person probably uniquely qualified to dance around the crazy politics of San Francisco to just do the daunting task at hand has decided to walk awayafter 40 years of dedicated public service in education. One could hardly blame her for wanting to step off the spinning platform of......

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Garcia: The mystery of Ed Jew

Until last week almost everything about San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew seemed a surprise. He astonished many veteran city political observers when he emerged from a crowded and well-funded group of candidates to win his Outer Sunset district supervisor’s seat in November. And he has been anything but conventional since he joined the 11-member board, showing a maverick streak in his votes that have often left him as a sole voice of dissent — or, some might say, he’s just plain quirky. Whatever his colleagues or the mayor thought Jew......

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Garcia: Presidio firefight

Nothing will burn up a group of firefighters quite like the threat of closing fire stations and laying off some of their uniformed members. Throw in some very curious bureaucratic moves and you’ll understand why tensions are running high among the Presidio’s firefighters and emergency medical service employees this week.Officials from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Presidio Trust on Monday convened a review panel to consider recommendations from a consultant that suggested the two agencies — which jointly pay for fire services — could save money by......

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Garcia: Call it a crime

Pity the poor soul who inherited the formidable mess left behind by Terence Hallinan, a politician posing as a prosecutor in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office who turned the administration of the law into a three-ring circus. And that soul is Kamala Harris, who found an agency stuck in a technological time warp, underfunded and understaffed, and still reeling from the aftermath of her predecessor’s irresponsible attempt to bring down the leadership of the San Francisco Police Department.In the three years since she took over, Harris has received much......

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Garcia: Are progressives doing the chicken dance?

You know you live in a very special place when you attend a weekend community meeting and you never know how many of your fellow citizens will show up wearing chicken suits.So it was a surprise to some that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s monthly town-hall meeting turned out to be a protest and poultry-free affair in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood Saturday, with those in attendance seeming genuinely happy to have a chance to ask the mayor and a host of department heads about their concerns over local parks, their streets......

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Garcia: Business blues

San Francisco is in the midst of celebrating its annual Small Business Week, which is probably a good thing to do when 95 percent of all the companies in this fair city are small businesses.Yet at the kickoff event at City Hall, only the mayor and two supervisors — Ed Jew and Sean Elsbernd — were in attendance (Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin got credited with a drive-by), prompting the response from some quarters that perhaps our leaders are sending the wrong message to our local proprietors.That’s what triggered......

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Garcia: All bets are off

When California spun the big wheel on Indian gaming several years ago, it may have seemed like a relatively safe bet. At the time, there appeared little chance the Golden State would ever get so tied to gambling money that it would start to resemble Nevada.The odds have now changed, as reflected by the intensive and expensive lobbying campaign by several wealthy tribes to greatly expand their slot machine allotment at their thriving casinos. And now the only thing standing between new compact agreements between the state and a number......

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Garcia: Fighting shadows on homelessness

The number of homeless people on welfare in San Francisco continues to drop at remarkable levels at the same time the amount of rhetoric over quality-of-life crime issues continues to rise. Could we have it any other way? This week, members of the mayor’s staff, the District Attorney’s Office, the Police Department, the Public Defender’s Office, local judges and a number of homeless service providers are holding talks about ways in which The City might set up a community justice center to deal with the high-crime neighborhoods in the Tenderloin......

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Garcia: Will the state truly fix the freeway?

The beautiful Bay that gives our region its name also serves as a reminder of how quickly, by accident, a peninsula can resemble an island.With the stunning collapse of the MacArthur Maze interchange near the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, residents here once again realize how fragile any transportation system is that relies on a series of lengthy water-crossing spans. The smallest things, like a lost highway connection, serve as a wakeup call to a public still overly reliant on cars. And nearly 20 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake......

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Garcia: City Hall budget politics hurt SF

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors doesn’t make the distinction between acting as societal saviors or unremitting spenders, which is why when it comes to taxpayer money, the numbers rarely add up.That is why the political tilt-a-wheel known as the budget process is in operation early and often this year and promises to be the sort of carnival sideshow that the board majority seems to crave.Rarely has that been on display more clearly than this week’s pyrotechnics over a proposal to grab nearly $30 million in supplemental funds from the......

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Garcia: Niners dropped the ball

When the San Francisco 49ers unveil their financial scheme to get Santa Clara to help fund its proposed stadium deal tonight, they’ll be bringing out a plan that’s as familiar as its once-vaunted West Coast offense.You know, how they’ll be providing hundreds of jobs, millions of dollars to the local economy, untold amounts of tax revenue — the whole nine yards. And it will have all the merit of a prediction that the team will get to the Super Bowl next year.We know this because the organization has been saying......

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Garcia: Best sports story also most unlikely

The Dallas Mavericks had one of the best seasons in the history of the National Basketball Association, compiling the most wins in franchise history, the top record and boasting the league’s probable Most Valuable Player.They came within a jump shot of going to the NBA Finals last year, and most experts are predicting themto march to a league title.So you would think they must be giddy about facing the Golden State Warriors, who have been wandering in the barren desert of bad NBA teams so long they haven’t sniffed the......

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Garcia: Muni is watching

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in San Francisco, a snapshot may soon be worth $100. That could be the cost for drivers caught on cameras installed on Muni buses if their vehicles are caught double-parked in bus-only lanes. It’s part of a new proposal being pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and transit officials who want to speed up Muni’s timeliness — something that was knocked by a city auditor’s report this week.Newsom is fairly obsessed with Muni these days, and rightly so. Riders who have been......

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Garcia: Will S.F. snub world's best?

When it comes to dealing with issues relating to golf in San Francisco, it appears many of our elected officials have a bunker mentality.They can see the green within reach, but sand is their constant companion.That will explain why The City apparently appears poised to bury a deal with the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour to stage four more tournaments at Harding Park Golf Course in the coming years. And if ever there were a case where the Board of Supervisors can’t see the forest through the trees at San Francisco’s......

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Garcia: High stakes in Media News, Hearst trial

You’d think that of all businesses, newspaper companies would understand the ageless adage that the readers are always right.But apparently the old rules apply only when business is good, and that certainly wouldn’t be the case for the Bay Area’s biggest newspaper companies: MediaNews and the Hearst Corp., the New York-based owner of the San Francisco Chronicle.Desperate times call for desperate measures, and to say that the companies that own such disparate papers as the Contra Costa Times, the San Jose Mercury News and the once-mighty Voice of the West......

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Garcia: Identity thieves do taxes and keep refund

Most people are delighted to get a tax refund around this time of year, during the annual dance with the Internal Revenue Service.At least that’s the case when they file theirtaxes for themselves. When strangers do it for you — and then pocket the cash — the feeling is quite different.Just ask Will and Gracie Tan, a Daly City couple who are trying to recover from a very bad start of a year that began with an identity theft case, resulted in crooks making a huge dent in their banking......

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Garcia: Cash-strapped Muni catches discount fever

If ever someone was looking for a transportation discount, Muni has the ticket for you. And a token, and a transfer and if you fit the bill, all manner of free passes.A funny thing happened to San Francisco’s public transportation system, as its chief executives looked to see whether it would need another $150 million to run properly or whether it should be operated without any fares at all. It discovered that there are enough discount tickets and other forms of passes used by the system that it would take......

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Garcia: Agnos makes little sense in housing post

The words troubled and Housing Authority have been linked for so long, you’d think that city officials would have come up with a new euphemism by now to describe the agency thatoversees public housing in San Francisco.But the terms politics and public policy have an equally bad history together here, which is why the current case involving the San Francisco Housing Authority is an unseemly, frustrating, unmitigated mess.A few weeks back, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy made the decidedly curious decision to appoint Art Agnos, the former mayor......

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Garcia: S.F. seeking answer to jury-duty problem

When paid observers turn their eyes on San Francisco’s fast-rotating jury service pool, chances are pretty good they’ll get a different kind of summons.I know this from personal experience. After I wrote about how often San Franciscans get called to court a few weeks back, I received an invitation to discuss it with some of those charged with overseeing the jury selection process, who wanted to provide insight into why the local system here is so challenged to find potential members.That was the main point of my previous column, since......

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Garcia: Can the 49ers see the end zone?

It seems fitting that the San Francisco 49ers want to build a stadium next to a giant amusement park because team officials are spinning their story so hard it’s as if they’re on a Tilt-A-Whirl.In the current tale, the once-wondrous NFL team is eyeing a parking lot next to Great America in Santa Clara as its favorite site because it fits all of their criter — it’s in the Bay Area, it’s near team headquarters, it doesn’t involve any other residential or commercial development and the team believes it has......

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Garcia: City Hall does customer service?

When it comes to providing easy phone access to city services in San Francisco, there has long been a deep disconnect.Residents here have complained loudly about how difficult it is to reach certain agencies and officials, and the telephone maze for government departments seemed more like a system designed to keep callers from their intended destinations. Over the years, I have received so many calls from readers about how difficult it is to get through to some agencies that at one point I printed an emergency handbook for desperate citizens.That......

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Garcia: Summer of Love really is over

Somehow I don’t think that banning alcohol sales at the Haight Street Fair this year is going to make it a much more straight-laced affair. For that to happen, I think they’d have to declare a "Spare the Air’’ day, close all the head shops and prohibit the use of matches.But I will say that this year’s Haight Street fest will have an added layer of interest because it’s the first one in decades that will actually be scrutinized by numerous city departments and officials, as well as a host......

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Garcia: Why are we called to jury duty so often?

There just aren’t many big cities in America where jurors could accurately be described as the usual suspects.But that’s the case in San Francisco, where the prospect of receiving a summons to appear in court as a potential juror is like an annual ritual, a legal dance echoing a brave, frigid march of the penguins across the Civic Center and South of Market.I know this because I have received the court’s appeal letter almost every year since I moved back to San Francisco, and from my conversations with my fellow......

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Garcia: Smoke and mirrors

The next time members of the world’s press descend on the quiet enclave of Belmont, they better bring more than their microphones, their satellite trucks and their predisposed notions.If not, they’re going to have a tough time finding someone to talk to — a situation I managed to avoid just in time this week before the latest batch of televised stories hit the airwaves.For those still reeling from the frenzied start of March Madness, Belmont has been grabbing a lot of headlines around the globe these days because officials there......

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Garcia: GGP road closure issue just won’t die

For the first time since I started writing about it 10 years ago, I’m not going to take a stand on the Golden Gate Park road closure issue.It’s not because my views have changed or that any of the issues are different. And it’s not because I’ve mellowed over the years —certainly just about anybody at City Hall will attest to that.It’s mainly because this is one issue on which no matter what the facts are, people cling to their views as if they were life rafts in the middle......

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Garcia: Senate showdown

The race is almost 15 months away, and it’s generally off the radar screen for most people who aren’t addicted to watching the grains of sand inside the hourglass of California politics.But if the early signs are any indication, the 2008 primary campaign for the 3rd District Senate seat between incumbent Carole Migden and San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno is going to be one rough-and-tumble affair.How nasty will it be? Unless I’m missing something, I’d describe it as a hide-the-kids-and-stay-indoors sort of race, with no enemy left unscathed, a kind......

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Garcia: Baker’s Dozen case loses steam

It seems somehow fitting that the overblown Yale assault case involved a group called the Baker’s Dozen, because in the end, it turned out to be something of a cream puff.No conspiracies, no trumped-up allegations involving high school rivalries, no whitewashed investigation, no hate crime. Just a New Year’s Eve party allegedly filled with drunken young men — some of whom picked the wrong fight — that set off a misplaced media frenzy and made a fairly routine case seem like a hunt for a serial killer.All that’s left now......

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Garcia: No cake for Golden Gate Bridge's 70th?

Just imagine, a magical 70th anniversary for one of the world’s most beautiful structural icons, and all you get is a lousy T-shirt.Oh, maybe an ornament too. And an engineering book. How’s that for your big party favors?The Golden Gate Bridge officially turns 70 on May 27, an occasion that seems fitting for a rather raucous or at least large celebration for one of the world’s greatest engineering feats — the suspended jewel that transforms the bay in the Bay Area. But if you’re hoping for fireworks, a musical gathering......

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Garcia: NFL fumbles seeking trademark to ‘Big Game’

For the casual observer, the only thing big about the "Big Game," as it has come to be known, is the size of the crowd.I realize that may be blasphemous to the alumni at Cal and Stanford, but as someone who has no stake in the outcome of the annual football contest between the two stellar Bay Area universities, I think it’s fair to objectively state that it’s been decades since the Big Game actually counted for anything other than bragging rights. After all, this is not Ohio State-Michigan or......

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Garcia: Supervisors throw Muni under the bus

You would think that with San Francisco’s Municipal Railway running at a deepening deficit, the Board of Supervisors wouldn’t consider adding to the transit agency’s woes by pushing a plan that could conceivably cost it another $6 million.You’d be wrong.Next week, the board appears to be headed on a collision course with fiscal reality — hardly the first time politics has trumped public policy. But the latest entanglement has been fraught with some intrigue and should shed some light on the board’s slippery inner workings.As pointed out on this paper’s......

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Eight Silly Hall years not enough to learn supes’ job

The whole idea of district elections was to give relative no-names a chance to compete against entrenched politicians, a concept that has changed the face of government in San Francisco, and not for the better.So it is a rather curious proposal being floated by one of those district stewards to change the city charter to extend the term limits of supervisors and give them more time to, you know, get the hang of it.Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who until recently appeared to be one of the more level-headed members of our......

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SFPD not thrilled about spotlight on Zodiac

It’s been nearly four decades since the last murder. The case has officially been listed as inactive. And yet the public fascination with the "Zodiac" killer seems to just grow with time, a true story that has expanded into urban myth.And now the movie.When "Zodiac" hits theaters early next month, its arrival will be greeted with a new round of media coverage — the media being the fuel for why the case has received publicity well beyond its due. And our local police will greet the news with as about......

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Garcia: California deserves clout in primary

When it comes to throwing its money around in presidential elections, California has few equals. As evidenced by the recent wave of visits from 2008 White House aspirants, candidates know that when it comes to big-time fundraising, California really is the Golden State.But when it comes to throwing its weight around in the nominating process, California has been the ultimate back-bencher, watching in self-imposed silence as a host of relatively tiny states determines the selection of Republican and Democratic presidential nominees.So it has become a hot national topic that the......

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Beautiful S.F. has a few notably ugly buildings

A group of American citizens recently weighed in with their thoughts on the top architectural gems in America, and San Francisco was rightly honored with some of their monumental achievements on the list, notably the Golden Gate Bridge, City Hall and the Fairmont hotel.Of course, the Hyatt Regency hotel on Market Street also made the cut, showing that taste is a relative thing and that the difference between the Eiffel Tower and a towering eyesore can be the configuration of a few large beams.But all the best lists in the......

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Baker's Dozen: Truth still taking a beating

Rarely has a story been so skewered, overheated and poorly served as the tale involving the choral group from Yale University whose members found themselves on the wrong side of some punches following a drunken soirée in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve.The latest entrée in the ongoing case is expected to be presented this week in the form of arrest warrants for some of the most aggressive combatants, who are likely to be charged with felony assault for their roles in the early morning dustup. But one thing that......

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Garcia: Departure of federal prosecutor good news for gangs, bad for S.F.

The media coverage of the abrupt resignation by U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan a few weeks ago generally focused on whether Ryan jumped or was pushed when he got to the windowsill.And given that U.S. attorneys all over the country are suddenly leaving their posts as President Bush looks to fill plum patronage jobs before his term ends, perhaps that angle was appropriate.For the record, Ryan insists he was already perched on the ledge when White House officials made any decision a fait accompli — a move that came some six......

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Garcia: Watergate reporters’ chronicle one of fame and fortune

Heroic is hardly a word one would use to describe the state of American journalism, not in an age of instant blogs, majestic mistakes, talking heads and celebrity gossip that passes as real news.But the term had real value and meaning once, and that is why there is a generation of reporters who credit their decision to go into the news gathering business for one primary reason: Watergate.Now, more than three decades after the story that brought down an American president came out, the tale of the two Washington Post......

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Garcia: Mayor must overcome self-doubt

Last week, after the mayor of San Francisco admitted that he had an affair with the wife of a longtime aide, his press director said Gavin Newsom didn’t have a drinking problem and that booze had nothing to do with the "mistake.’’ Whoops, my mistake. As it turns out, the mayor does have a problem with alcohol, but that’s not the cause of his major digression.They’re separate issues, really, according to his handlers, which is why they decided to spread the character/quaffing question into a second week. Now it’s all......

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Garcia: Drinking in The City? Say it ain’t so, Mayor

As if the initial news weren’t bad enough, now we have to listen to the mayor of San Francisco say he was a louse because he can’t handle his liquor. Well, not really, but kind of.Will someone please get me a drink?This sort-of excuse for sordid behavior is getting as tired as the politicians themselves. It may not fly in this ACLU-loving stronghold that the "devil made me do it," but I’m not sure anyone is going to buy that Gavin Newsom’s indiscretions were the work of Jack Daniels.Newsom and......

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Garcia: Sex scandal media frenzy won't end soon

One of Gavin Newsom’s handlers asked me on Thursday how long I thought the revelation of the mayor’s affair with his top aide’s wife would stay in the news cycle.Oh, maybe two or three months, possibly longer if ratings and newspaper street sales continue to spike up. Remember, it is a TV sweeps period.I have been covering news events at City Hall for more than two decades, but nothing — not homicides, not riots, not allegations of top officials sleeping with underage prostitutes — has brought out more "media’’......

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Garcia: Chaos around mayor grows

The general view around town is that the only person who could beat Gavin Newsom in the race for mayor this year was Gavin Newsom, and in that regard, the mayor is doing a pretty fine job.Yesterday’s announcement that Newsom’s campaign manager was quitting is the latest stumble in Newsom’s re-election effort, one that has yet to see a credible challenger in sight. Yet Alex Tourk’s abrupt departure is a sure sign that things are something of a mess in Room 200 — especially given the stunning revelations about what......

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Garcia: Porn king scores only-in-S.F. victory

One of San Francisco’s most interesting and majestic buildings hasn’t been occupied for 36 years — which should tell you that things don’t often work smoothly in a town that places politics above practicality.Yet it’s not often that an unfolding story so clearly reveals a city’s backward stance as much as that involving the historic State Armory building in the Mission district. It’s a classic tale of a city getting what it deserves.In this case, San Francisco is getting spanked, whipped and hogtied. And it appears helpless to do anything......

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Ken Garcia: Governor’s health care plan taxes meaning of the word ‘fee’

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made enough bad movies in his career that you would think he’d know when he’s been handed a lousy script.For even his considerable charm, bravado and his marketing-savvy staff are not enough to push the idea that the public will be paying for his whopping pile of programs, including his $12 billion universal health care plan, with "fees.’’When is a fee not a tax? When it’s packaged as part of an election-year promise.Now, I realize that the governor won an easy campaign against Democratic candidate Phil......

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Ken Garcia: Meddling in massive housing deal could kill needed development

In its never-ending search for the elusive, perfect housing deal, San Francisco is threatening to lose a very good one.That would be the 1,900-unit apartment project proposed on a gritty stretch of Market Street that has already been approved by the Planning Commission — and where it is headed again today on its tortuous journey through The City’s Byzantine political process. For after more than two years of negotiations, members of the Board of Supervisors want to lay their own imprint on the proposal — which makes one wonder if......

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Ken Garcia: Yale Baker’s Dozen case has a life of its own — a fictional one

It seems fitting that the Baker’s Dozen case includes several players involved in San Francisco’s infamous "Fajitagate’’ story some years back, because like that sensationalistic, overwrought tale, this one is bursting with sizzle and lean on steak.When San Francisco police investigators return from the East Coast today after interviewing one of the injured victims from the Yale University singing group, it will mark the first time they will have received a nearly full account of the incident. Yet it will also serve as a reminder of how......

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Debate over crime cameras brings out the clueless in S.F.

At some point in the near future, we may find out if a picture is worth more than a thousand words — maybe something to the tune of three to five years.That’s at the core of the debate over the placement of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas of San Francisco, an issue that pits the left versus the very, very left — an ideological divide that in San Francisco is far wider than most people could imagine. And it’s a gap that usually splits those who have seen or experienced......

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Ken Garcia: Politics bubble beneath Yale Baker’s Dozen case

It’s no wonder the Yale Baker’s Dozen assault case has drawn so much attention. It has it all — big-time political agendas, personal feuds, the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful and now more attorneys than a special edition of "Law and Order.’’About the only thing it’s missing is a few key facts and a general reshaping of the original story line, which was spun so quickly and masterfully that it would have made the White House proud.For it turns out this story isn’t about a bunch of......

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Ken Garcia: Hot dam — plan revives water wars

The astounding $143 billion budget proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week has so many projects and risky ventures, it’s no wonder that a lot of people say it is flush with impassioned pipe dreams.And nowhere may that be more true than in the governor’s plan to build two dams in Northern and Central California, while describing it as an environmentally prudent idea.I seem to recall that our eco-friendly governor was the same person who gave a green light to a study at the behest of environmentalists on the possibility......

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Ken Garcia: Few cities more welcoming than S.F. — for hardened criminals

If you ever wondered why so many career criminals come to San Francisco to ply their trade, the answer was brought home with stunning clarity this week.It’s safer for them to be here — and more dangerous for you.That was the bottom line in a presentation made to the Police Commission this week in which the Police Department’s chief of investigations outlined the gaping hole in the criminal justice system, which allows serious felons routinely to get stay-out-of-prison passes in San Francisco.That will partially explain why nearly 30 percent of......

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Ken Garcia: In upside-down S.F., porn is OK in the Mission, but housing isn’t

San Francisco seems to have a particular fetish for finding obscure reasons to block new development and housing. But prohibiting porn? No way — that would be like stepping on someone’s thigh-high, leather boot-covered toes.In that frequent act of reality arriving on the shores of San Francisco’s fantasy land, it was reported in The Examiner on Wednesday that an online fetish company purchased the landmark State Armory building at 14th and Mission streets as a site for producing kinky porn flicks. While that might not get many hot and bothered......

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Ken Garcia: City officials should dial into Wi-Fi deal, hang up on politics

With the much-anticipated announcement Friday that San Francisco has signed on with two Internet giants to provide free wireless service throughout The City, we can come to only one inescapable conclusion: Don’t hold your breath.Despite the high-profile pronouncement that San Francisco is about the cross the digital divide, reality suggests that the wireless network that is designed to cover the 47 square miles of political wackiness isn’t going to fill the local airwaves anytime soon. Newsom had hoped to have the deal announced by year’s end, a sort of tech......

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Ken Garcia: Caltrain’s running on time, but blood on the tracks worrisome

It’s a good thing that Caltrain officials finally appear to be going the extra mile on public safety measures, providing extra training, public education and monetary resources.After all, considering its record in the past year, when it comes to public safety, the agency is more than a little behind schedule.Caltrain is touting its increased ridership, added runs and a host of other progress markers, and perhaps rightly so. But what really stands out during the past year is the incredible number of fatalities on its Peninsula tracks — 17 —......

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Ken Garcia: Winners of 2006 ‘Yorkies’ show foolishness knows no bounds

In a year brimming with local dubious achievements, it would normally be difficult to single out any particular act or individual as worthy of the top honor. But 2006 was no ordinary year, not when you consider the gargantuan blow delivered by 49ers co-owner John York, who with one abrupt, intemperate phone call, announced that he was moving the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara — and killed The City’s much-anticipated 2016 Olympic bid in the process.Rarely has one individual gone to such lengths to set himself apart from other......

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Ken Garcia: Feds riding wave of illogic with Mavericks proposal

The world knows the Peninsula for many reasons — Silicon Valley, Stanford University, the rugged, sweeping coastline. Yet as much as anything, the region has been pinned on the global map as the home to one of the world’s greatest and most dangerous surfing spots, an elusive place called Mavericks.And as unrelentingly exciting as it is to watch waterlogged acrobats scale fast-moving 60-foot mountains, it’s just as easy for a massive bureaucracy to come up with a plan to curtail it. So when they host the annual Mavericks surfing contest......

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Ken Garcia: Protest over city’s homelessness program not heard much anymore

There was a time not too many years ago when a relatively simple welfare-reform plan in San Francisco was the most controversial topic in town. It was an idea to take money doled out in general assistance funds and use it instead on services and housing for the homeless.Care Not Cash, as it came to be known, became the subject of a major opposition campaign led by public officials who had a vested interest in the nonprofit homeless lobby they helped to create. The voters, tired of the rhetorical jousting......

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Ken Garcia: Score one for The City in bid to fight violent gang menace

I’m not sure what the best part of San Francisco’s new gang injunction against the notorious Oakdale Mob is — that it appears to be incredibly effective or that a few civil liberties groups have tried to fight it.But if there was ever a story to show how politically warped San Francisco can be, the opposition to the Oakdale legal case puts it in a shiny case for all to see.For those caught up in the holiday party circuit, City Attorney Dennis Herrera recently won an injunction against 22 known......

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Ken Garcia: Tragic tale of young father’s death goes straight to the heart

Was it the picture of Kim with his two young daughters, the perfect snapshot of a young father willing to sacrifice everything to protect his family? Was it that Kim was part of a technologically savvy media group that knew how to keep his ongoing plight in the public eye? Or was it that rescue workers worked so feverishly to find him that when they finally discovered his body it was such a crushing, emotional blow that they could barely talk about it?No doubt it was all these things and......

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Ken Garcia: Mayor ready to strike back after supervisors’ petty meddling

Mark it on your calendar: This is the week the 2007 San Francisco mayoral race began, the start of which will undoubtedly be a bruising, contact-filled campaign.The only question is, who’s going to be willing to step into the ring with The City’s most popular politician?I recently suggested that Mayor Gavin Newsom needed to stop trying to appease his critics and start fighting his opponents, who have been trying to nibble away at his authority through legislative gamesmanship. This week, the meddling got personal and petty, and the mayor essentially......

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Ken Garcia: Niners’ fumbling of stadium issue shows how not to treat fans

With all the hype about wanting to provide the ultimate game-day fan experience, the owners of the 49ers only forgot one thing: the fans.As boring and risk-averse as the 49ers have been on the field this season, the York family has proven to be utterly conniving and duplicitous off it. Under the publicity-driven guise of trying to finally fulfill the long-promised San Francisco football stadium to the 49er faithful, it turns out the organization was engaged in secret talks with the city of Santa Clara to move the team south.Oh,......

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Ken Garcia: Smelly deal makes mockery of journalistic competition

Most people would probably agree that if you were financing a deal for your fiercest business rival to expand its empire, that the word "competition" wouldn’t have much meaning.But when you’re losing $1 million or so a week, concessions have to be made, even if it means tying the final noose knot that your "rival" hung around your neck. Desperation doesn’t allow for much pretense.That describes the state of the two largest newspaper companies in the Bay Area, whose financial feints were exposed by a federal judge this week, making......

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Ken Garcia: Losing qualified schools chief would be blow, shame for city

The Examiner reported this week that acting San Francisco public schools superintendent Gwen Chan is openly questioning whether she should apply for the permanent job. And that makes some sense when you consider that Chan is experienced, capable, steady and has little taste for politics.She just wants to see The City improve the district through better education, teacher development and upgraded facilities. And that would no doubt put her at odds with any school board bent on ideological adventures, political opportunism and racial activism.It’s hardly a coincidence that the school......

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Ken Garcia: Stumbling beginning by Pelosi chips away at Dems’ grace period

If this is the show of unity Democrats promised with their stunning congressional election victory this month, you have to wonder what will happen when the honeymoon period ends.For as it stands, San Francisco’s own darling Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, is hardly looking like the consensus-building leader she vowed to be after a leading a very disciplined campaign to win the House back from long-held Republican control. Instead of the overreaching arrogance that defined the GOP in recent years, the early signs suggest that the Democrats under Pelosi will be defined......

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Ken Garcia: Moral high ground sorely lacking in Simpson fiasco

As the recent O.J. Simpson/News Corp. pseudo-reality project proved this week, when it comes to the rush for ratings and money, tastelessness knows no bounds.But the only real surprise in the lurid tale isn’t that television and publishing executives at News Corp. green-lighted the project. It was that they seemed taken aback when the Furies of hell were unleashed after it was announced that an acquitted, but suspected, killer of two young people was about to tell millions of people how he would have murdered them, that is, if he......

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Ken Garcia: Will anti-drunken-driving technology fly in The City?

The holidays are upon us — shopping frenzies, festive parties, good food, liquid cheer and sobriety checkpoints.Talk about buzz kill.But while the vast majority of seasonal revelers are careful not to overindulge with spirits during this time of year, there is always someone around to remind us how drinking and driving don’t mix — even in slurry San Francisco, where the town leaders essentially legalized pot growing and distribution for adults last week.The cautionary flag was raised recently by several national highway safety associations and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which......

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Ken Garcia: Election shows S.F. marches to its own wacky drummer

One of these days, officials in San Francisco are going to understand that they are elected to focus on potholes, not pot, and math scores, not military policy.Clearly, this is not one of those days.It’s been a rather remarkable week in The City, where voters once again showed themselves to be remarkably out of touch with the state — often giddily so. The Board of Supervisors this week approved legislation that all but makes the growing and selling of marijuana legal for adults in San Francisco and officially lists pot......

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Given 49ers’ record, Santa Clara would be wise to beware

I’d like to tell you that the details on the proposed move of the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara are a little sketchy. But I can’t because there are no details.None. Nada. Zip. But boy, are they just full of hope down south. So much so that they can’t wait to began negotiating with co-owner John York and his band of merry travelers about their shared vision of gridiron dreams."I have nothing but enthusiasm about any proposal to get the San Francisco 49ers to move here,’’ Santa Clara Mayor......

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Ken Garcia: York shows his true colors with surprise attack on San Francisco

You’ve got to hand it to the San Francisco 49ers for defying the odds. They’ve actually managed to show that you can field a team that’s worse off the field than on it.Of all the losing calls the organization has made in recent years, none can be as bad as one made by co-owner John York last week when — after nine years of halting starts, feints and promises — he decided to throw in the towel on building a new stadium in The City that gave the team its......

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Ken Garcia: Governor’s course correction mirrored national mood

On a night when Democrats were seizing control of Congress and assuming command of statehouses, California re-elected a Republican governor in a landslide that exceeded all expectations.But although the Golden State would once again appear to be running against a national political tide, its voters were actually in step with a trend that reverberated around the nation: Consensus was key, extremism was out. Candidates who moved to the center won independent swing voters. For many Democratic candidates, that meant a stunning debut. For Arnold Schwarzenegger, that transformed into an intriguing......

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Ken Garcia: Pelosi ascension raises question: How effective will she be?

A lot of red states are feeling awfully blue this morning and no region should be happier about that than the Bay Area, which has survived months of bashing about its liberal underpinnings only to emerge as the home district for the likely new speaker of the House.It’s been a stunning turn of events for Democrats, who have had to survive the last six years as the minority party under the heavy hand of Republican excess. The midterm elections have proven to be the biggest turnover in Congress in more......

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Ken Garcia: Even in politically correct San Francisco, ‘Borat’ is a scream

He’s sexist, racist, homophobic and blissfully oblivious. His apparent cluelessness manages to bring out the worst in people. He is so offensive that politically incorrect doesn’t even apply to him. And he’s drawing huge crowds from New York to San Francisco. Nice.Welcome to the phenomenon that is "Borat’’ — a film that takes a character who redefines the word idiot and makes the rest of us look like ninnies. He’s taking the world by storm, and if you haven’t heard the buzz by now you must be a shrouded in......

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Ken Garcia: Struggling 49ers’ rough patch may become one for the ages

You have to wonder how committed the San Francisco 49ers are to building a costly new stadium, given that they may never again field a team that could fill it.It’s been nearly 30 years since the organization was in such a state of decline. The franchise was saved when new owner Eddie DeBartolo hired a coach named Bill Walsh and turned the worst team in the National Football League into a model for all of professional sports. And it’s taken about 10 years for Eddie’s sister, Denise, and her husband,......

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Ken Garcia: Backers of S.F. seediness take preservation to the extreme

One of these days I’m going to read a story in one of the national newspapers that paints San Francisco in a positive light.Sadly, those days are probably still years from now.I know this because last week the Wall Street Journal wrote a story with yet another "only in San Francisco’’ theme — in this case, a tale about some small, radical gay group that is fighting efforts by a community organization that is trying to beautify an area of the gritty Tenderloin.I realize that almost every issue in San......

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Ken Garcia: Backers of S.F. seediness take preservation to the extreme

One of these days I’m going to read a story in one of the national newspapers that paints San Francisco in a positive light.Sadly, those days are probably still years from now.I know this because last week the Wall Street Journal wrote a story with yet another "only in San Francisco’’ theme — in this case,a tale about some small, radical gay group that is fighting efforts by a community organization that is trying to beautify an area of the gritty Tenderloin.I realize that almost every issue in San Francisco......

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Ken Garcia: S.F. elections chief keeps name out of headlines — a good thing

If John Arntz had voted for his choice, chances are he’d wish that I did this column sometime after next week’s election.That way I couldn’t jinx San Francisco’s elections chief by doing a story about him — kind of like all those athletes whose careers tanked after they were featured on a Sports Illustrated cover.His initial feeling? "I just went cold," he said in response to my question — not the first public official who has had that reaction to my calls. "Those are the ones that make you shiver."But......

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Ken Garcia: Don’t be fooled: Prop. 90 would be disastrous for California

Few measures display the beauty and the scariness of California’s much-abused initiative process quite like Proposition 90, a slithering regulatory mess disguised as a sunny plan to protect property owners.The initiative is the overwrought response to last year’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed the city of New London, Conn. to seize residents’ homes through eminent domain — an abuse that raised the ire of a government-wary nation.So it was no surprise that someone would try to rein in the power of government by limiting its ability to......

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Ken Garcia: S.F. Symphony chief’s mission: Bring music to the masses

One of Michael Tilson Thomas’ greatest attributes as a conductor and music director is that he is first and foremost an enthusiastic ambassador for classical music. Anyone who has attended one of the San Francisco Symphony’s performances in recent years knows that the effusive Thomas loves to discuss the history and background of a particular piece — with the flair and whimsy that have made him a national brand name.Nowhere are those skills better displayed than in the upcoming nationwide television series and multimedia project "Keeping Score,’’ which airs on......

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Ken Garcia: Obsession with mayor’s personal life has gotten a little silly

After reading all the headlines recently, you might think that City Hall has become the film backdrop for "The Young and the Restless."Of course, not every town can boast that their chief executive is, in the ever-restrained view of ABC News, "Mayor McHottie" — or that each of his dates launches another 100 blogs.Its been quite a few interesting weeks for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the local members of the Fourth Estate, who have apparently determined that Newsom’s personal style and private life are a lot more interesting......

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Time for Giants to kick

It was not a good sign when Lou Piniella looked at the lineup and overall shape of the San Francisco Giants and decided to take a managing job about 1,900 miles away in Chicago.And it wasn’t a good sign when I ran into Giants’ Chief Operating Officer Larry Baer this week and told him I wanted to talk to him about the team. He said if I wanted to talk about the "Barry negotiations" he wouldn’t be able to comment "and that’s been the same for everybody."But that wasn’t going......

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Ken Garcia: Residents pretty happy about state of The City, but not Muni

A majority of city residents believe San Francisco is headed in the right direction — but at the same time, an increasing number say they believe Muni is getting off track. They appear more than willing to support a huge bond for public schools — but they don’t want to keep increasing taxes on parking and business.And the members of the Board of Supervisors? All in all, they are generally perceived as a highly mediocre bunch. As we crawl toward another election in a few weeks, it’s interesting to note......

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Ken Garcia: Angelides’ late moves offer too little and come far too late

Phil Angelides and his supporters were said to be fuming over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s guest spot on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’’ last week because the Democratic candidate was not offered equal time.But late-night television is really no different than a political campaign. In the end it’s all about appearances and ratings — two areas in which Angelides is faring poorly.Angelides’ campaign has been so out of focus that in the only televised debate between the two candidates, he had trouble finding which camera to look into. His most......

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Ken Garcia: One year later, new de Young Museum exceeds expectations

As the backdrop for so many pitched political battles, Golden Gate Park hasn’t always been a field of dreams. But if the new de Young Museum reminds us of anything, it’s that if you build it, they will come.What a difference a year makes. The one-year anniversary festivities taking place at the de Young this weekend are just the official trappings for what has been a remarkable debut of the glimmering new museum. Not only has it silenced most of the critics and persistent park gadflies, it has put the......

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Ken Garcia: Saint Francis bucks hospital trend by giving more care

One century-old San Francisco organization is bucking a state and national trend, and in the coming years it should bring considerable comfort to tens of thousands of city residents.That would be venerable Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, which last week opened its new emergency department, a state-of-the-art facility in the middle of the most densely populated area of The City. The department is nearly double the size of the former emergency treatment center, which hospital officials are predicting will allow them to serve more patients in less time.They were throwing a......

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Ken Garcia: Workers, families would suffer supervisors’ parking tax plan

With so many pointless and politically motivated measures on the local ballot this year, it’s no wonder a lot of San Francisco residents are driven to distraction.But of all the wayward initiatives cluttering the voting pamphlet, none reveal just how out of touch some city supervisors are with the needs of everyday workers and average families quite like Proposition E, this fall’s proposed parking punishment tax.There are many reasons to oppose another unnecessary increase in The City’s parking tax, not the least of which is that no one had a......

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Ken Garcia: Metro Theatre screen goes dark in latest blow to cinema palaces

When San Francisco’s Metro Theatre underwent a stunning renovation eight years ago, one of the architects involved called it a "bow to the romance" of the large, single-screen theater.But like so many Hollywood romances, this cinematic union could not last. A little more than a week ago one of The City’s most glorious and elegant movie theaters faded to black, the latest in a sad trend that has seen the curtain come down on some of San Francisco’s grandest film houses.The closing of the Union Street mainstay had long been......

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Ken Garcia: Homeless in Golden Gate Park: An old story that never ends

San Francisco’s progressive proselytes would have us believe that the many campers who call Golden Gate Park home do the site no harm — they’re just a benign presence among the flowers and the trees.Reality presents a different picture. In a scant three days after homeless outreach teams and cleanup crews began fanning out along the eastern edge of the park, they collected more than seven tons of garbage as well as the usual assortment of tents, sleeping bags and furniture. To no one’s surprise, they’ve also uncovered sites full......

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Ken Garcia: Trio’s labor of love is real story behind S.F. bluegrass festival

It may be a fortunate thing that financier Warren Hellman didn’t fall in love with punk rock music. Otherwise, Golden Gate Park might be the site of the world’s biggest mosh pit this weekend.Instead, the stages will be set for the largest bluegrass festival in the country starting Friday — 72 bands in three days in the heart of San Francisco’s forested jewel. The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass event has grown so large — officials estimate more than 300,000 people attended last October — that it’s easy to forget that it......

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Executions don’t bespeak a humane, civilized culture

Death by execution has its own protocol — a formal process that has been the subject of a federal court hearing in San Jose this week.And to read Procedure 770, the state’s official 39-page handbook on how to execute condemned inmates, you might think that California really does have a good argument that it has found a kindler, gentler way to kill some of its most loathsome criminals. After all, with every detail laid out — the number and dose of the injections, the lineup of the all-volunteer execution team,......

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Ken Garcia: How many allowances must be made for guerrilla art in parks?

When the dripping fog rolls in, there are quite a few slippery spots at Brooks Park, a tiny, little-known, green parcel that sits high above San Francisco’s Oceanview district. But no slope is quite as slippery as the one fashioned by a vocal park activist, who decided to install a guerrilla art project in the trees and on the hill.And as Peter Vaernet has found in recent months, one man’s muse is another agency’s lingering headache. By trying to craft his own "don’t tell, then ask’’ policy, Vaernet has inspired......

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How the Presidio Trust can regain the trust of the community

The Presidio Trust is about to embark on a 30-year management plan. And that should give it almost enough time to get it right.History, so far, is not on its side. But if it actually starts listening to the input from its neighbors in San Francisco, there will be room for optimism.The trust certainly has gotten the community‘s attention. Last week more than 200 people packed the meeting room at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio to air their views about a proposal to close down or move some......

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Tom Mazzolini has made sure the blues bands play on

No matter how many years pass by, when September rolls around, Tom Mazzolini can’t help but fret.How blue can he get? He could talk for an hour about the corporate takeover of the music and concert world, but as soon as the first sweet notes echo acrosshis favorite meadow in San Francisco, his image becomes one of a very satisfied soul.Mazzolini is the producer of the San Francisco Blues Festival and has been since its inception in 1973. That would make this weekend’s event at Fort Mason the 34th annual......

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Ken Garcia: Late measures load ballot, lighten taxpayers’ pocketbooks

Supporters of guerrilla politics everywhere may have enjoyed the 11th-hour stunt pulled off by a group of San Francisco supervisors this year to place a bunch of measures on the November ballot.But the smiles on the faces of those favoring stealth government may not last when the bill comes in, since, as with most things here in Fat City, this one comes with a few zeroes attached.Leading the charge for the backroom deal to flood the ballot with a bunch of initiatives that received no public input was none other......

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Ken Garcia: Port’s development deals tend to get incredible sinking feeling

So many big development deals have gotten tossed overboard at the Port of San Francisco in recent years, it’s no wonder the agency has had trouble staying afloat in the maritime business.Last week saw the official sinking of two separate plans for the long-awaited cruise ship terminal that was envisioned as one of the keys in the transformation of the San Francisco waterfront. Part of a mixed-used $400 million project that was to include hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space, the cruise ship terminal has......

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Tape fiasco shows Angelides campaign is tied up in knots

This week produced a vivid tale of two campaigns — one surging forward with confidence and focus, and the other foundering over a strategic blunder and lack of a coherent theme.Guess which one is Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneger’s and which is Phil Angelides’?At a time when the Republican governor was campaigning around the state, posing for pictures with Democratic Party leaders who joined him for a signing of a minimum wage increase bill, Angelides was in full damage control mode, trying to deal with the disclosure that someone on his campaign......

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Hewlett-Packard scandal rife with corporate secrecy — and irony

The swirling corporate scandal at Hewlett-Packard is so full of mystery and intrigue that no less than three state and federal agencies are investigating the decision by HP’s board to probe leaks to the media this year.But lost in all the growing headlines is a small but pertinent story about the central player, HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who in a face-saving move this week announced she was stepping down in January. Dunn, who oversaw the probe but said she was unaware of some of the tactics used — including the......

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Critics of anti-crime cameras led by knee-jerk ideology

Rarely has there been a clearer picture of San Francisco’s maddening clash of ideology and reality than in the decision to place surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods.Mayor Gavin Newsom announced last week that The City will install another 50 cameras in public housing projects around San Francisco as part of the attempt to reduce the surge in violence that recently saw five people killed on one day. The cameras have proved successful in helping police solve some crimes, including the apprehension of a man who shot a 13-year-old girl in......

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Ken Garcia: Gubernatorial campaign shaping up badly for bland Angelides

When Democratic leaders converged in San Francisco and Los Angeles this week in a concerted show of harmony in support of gubernatorial hopeful Phil Angelides, much of the media focus was on the two charismatic mayors of the host cities.And that just underscores one of the many major problems Angelides faces as he enters the stretch run of what will be an increasingly bruising campaign — he’s engaged in a battle of personalities against one of the best-known people in the world.If Angelides ends up taking a back seat to......

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Bill would provide some justice to families hit by violent crime

As any crime victim’s family can painfully attest, it only takes one horrible incident to highlight a gap in the law and the need to fix it. It’s almost universally a crying need.So I’m hopeful that Gov. Schwarzenegger follows the lead of the Legislature and soon approves a bill that addresses one of the legal loopholes for violent felons in the state mental health system. Only then will there be a small amount of justice for Julia.Julia was my niece, one of my brother’s six children. One day, more than......

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Ken Garcia: Put down that cell phone and pay attention to the road

Advocating laws that bring more government into homes, backyards, clubs or cars has never made much sense to me, even though I have to admit the Legislature’s proposal to limit cell phone use in cars seems like a pretty good call.Now if the state could just extend the cell phone crackdown to bars, restaurants, stores and other shared public spaces, we might really be on to something.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently supports the idea of removing one of the primary distractions to drivers — and you can certainly see why, given......

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Ken Garcia: Put down that cell phone and pay attention to the road

Advocating laws that bring more government into homes, backyards, clubs or cars has never made much sense to me, even though I have to admit the Legislature’s proposal to limit cell phone use in cars seems like a pretty good call.Now if the state could just extend the cell phone crackdown to bars, restaurants, stores and other shared public spaces, we might really be on to something.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently supports the idea of removing one of the primary distractions to drivers — and you can certainly see why, given......

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For answer to homicide wave, look to revolving-door justice

The randomness of the violence in San Francisco this year has proved beyond vexing for the experts. A man gets behind the wheel of a car and starts mowing down pedestrians with casualindifference. Bullets fly in the Bayview district over the weekend as if the Wild West were very much alive, leaving five more people dead.So here in our capital of finger-pointing, someone’s got to get the blame — the police, the mayor, the district attorney. What about the judges who let so many felons walk the streets? The real......

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Katrina’s local lesson: When the Big One hits, we’re on our own

The strangest story this week is that President Bush is visiting the Gulf Coast as part of a public relations blitz on the first anniversary of Katrina.Good spin on Katrina? Only the White House dream merchants could conjure up that scenario.If Katrina showed us anything, it’s that most of the American public has minimal faith in any government’s ability to protect them from a cataclysmic event. And that’s why anyone who lives in California should be shuddering at the federal response to the nation’s most recent big natural disaster.City, state......

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Ken Garcia: With election nearing, governor kowtows to powerful Indian tribe

There’s nothing quite like an election year for a politician to make new friends and influence people. And it’s all the more touching when those friends turn out to be former bitter adversaries.That will explain how one of the wealthiest American Indian tribes recently got the deal of a lifetime from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The deal will allow the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians to more than double the number of slot machines in its two Palm Springs casinos and bring Las Vegas-scale gambling to the California desert.Officials from......

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What S.F. should never see: a plan to rid The City of trees

The feral cat lobby was out in full force this week, trying to tell the members of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission to make sure they save the furry creatures if and when they start cutting down trees.The quail lobby may not have gotten the e-mails because they weren’t out in full fury — its members can’t stand the feral cats because they kill their beloved birds. The dog lobby was present, as always, trying to protect its share of open space. In The City’s vicious cycle of special......

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Strip club workers tell City Hall ‘let us remain private dancers’

As I discovered anew last week, things are always a little different in San Francisco. Take, for example, my recent "take your daughter to work day’’ experience.I had to cover a public hearing. My teenage daughter had never been inside the refurbished City Hall — a perfect opportunity for a late-summer field trip.And that’s how Laura became familiarized with the terms "sex workers, erotic service providers and panic buttons" — though not necessarily in that order. Her first glimpse at city politics — at a hearing on proposed legislation affecting......

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When it comes to self-interest, lawmakers aren’t ready for reform

State lawmakers proved this week that shameless self-interest is a mighty large obstacle to overcome.That will explain the stifling inability of legislators to finally deal with redistricting and term limits — two issues that politicians in Sacramento have been wrestling with for two years and seem no closer to an answer today than they did when members of both parties decided to draw maps in 2000 to protect the status quo.In a largely symbolic gesture, the state Senate — one day after throwing in the towel on drawing new voting......

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Daly talks the progressive talk, but he walks the monied walk

Chris Daly, San Francisco’s most incendiary supervisor, has portrayed himself over the years as one of the forces fighting on behalf of the common man, ready to leap tall buildings to take on corporations, lobbyists, special interests and greedy developers everywhere.And Daly, who is up for re-election in November, must really like his job, because it appears he’s willing to do to just about anything to keep it — even if it means taking gobs of money from corporations, lobbyists, special interests and developers, especially those plying their trade in......

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Wildlife can stink up the place — and keep it clean, too

When most people hear about wildlife in San Francisco, they usually think of the Castro on Halloween or one of the annual summer street fairs.But it doesn’t get much wilder than when nature rears its complex head and decides to take up residence in and around your backyard. That’s when you start wishing that Steve Irwin made house calls.Animal control officials are quick to note that there is wildlife in every neighborhood in San Francisco. They are just as quick to add that there’s not much they can do when......

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Ken Garcia: High density in high-altitude Sierras is now highly exclusive

TRUCKEE — If not for the power of judicial intervention, it would be hard to imagine how much development would be taking place in this scenic Alpine wonderland.As it is, the level of building near here is on such a scale that a new word has been introduced to the great outdoors — high density.In recent years, the 45,000-acre forested expanse along Highway 267 known as the Martis Valley has been the subject of one of the fiercest development battles in Northern California. After a few key court rulings, the......

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Doggie Diner’s famous sign

The town’s official pooch got a new leash on life this week, and I for one could not be happier.The Doggie Diner head — the last of the original litter — was granted landmark status by the Board of Supervisors this week, a fitting act for a smiling snout that speaks volumes about San Francisco’s lengthy embrace of the sophisticated and the schlocky.But it also means that I can finally sign off the campaign to save DD’s much-abused head on which I labored the better part of a year, hounding......

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Ken Garcia: Approval of newspaper sale marks sad day for Bay Area

In announcing this week that the takeover of three Bay Area newspapers in a $1 billion deal would not substantially reduce media competition, the U.S. Justice Department showed great familiarity with legal loopholes and a lack of understanding about the local newspaper business.And that’s to be expected in an administration that has no problem seeing fewer editorial voices. But there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a very sad day for Bay Area newspaper readers and journalists.By allowing Denver-based Media-News to buy the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra......

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S.F. politicians usually view potholes as bumps in the road

They have a way of coming up in conversation at bars and parties, probably because people have encountered them so often along the way.Yet they have been so casually ignored by most politicians you would think they didn’t count. But just wait until election time.For slowly rising to the top of public opinion polls on issues near and dear to San Franciscans is not public transportation or homelessness, but the jagged road breaks that play havoc with cars, bicycles and create a near-death experience for skateboarders. Yes — potholes.If I......

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Ken Garcia: Supes look to extinguish S.F. Olympic flame before it’s lit

Let me see if I have this straight — San Francisco officials have been working for two years on their Olympic bid, and now that they’re headed to the finish line, a few members of the Board of Supervisors want to let voters say whether the bid should be pursued?As they like to say up in the broadcast booth, let the games begin!I realize that anything that would be a potential feather in the cap for the mayor and San Francisco would automatically be targeted — Cheney-like — by certain......

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Ken Garcia: Restoring Hetch Hetchy to pristine state is a nice fantasy

With scores of people succumbing to the record temperatures in the Central Valley this week, it seems appropriate to throw some water on an overheated idea that refuses to go away — no matter how many times it’s been shown to be a fiscal fantasy.And that would be the fanciful notion of tearing down the O’Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley to restore it to its pristine natural state, regardless of cost, practicality or need.The price of dismantling the dam to bring about this misty-eyed environmental crusade would be somewhere......

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Wild taxi ride will end with mayor reinstalling ousted chief

The great taxi revolution in San Francisco ran out of gas this week, leaving the industry exactly where it was a month ago — badly in need of a new direction.And that’s at the heart of the controversy that has ensnared the Taxi Commission in the past few weeks, a period in which some rebellious permit holders and company managers conspired to oust the agency’s executive director only to see it turn into a grand reversal of fortune.The palace coup will officially end today when Mayor Gavin Newsom reinstates former......

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How the City Attorney’s Office might actually reduce graffiti

The City Attorney's Office in San Francisco is charged with handling court cases and drafting legislation at the behest of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — which is why lawyers there spend so much time pursuing hackneyed laws based on ideological whims.Whether it is challenging the state's sole authority to issue handgun permits or fighting endless lawsuits over voter-approved changes to The City's welfare payment, City Attorney Dennis Herrera's staff has often been sent on quixotic legal journeys — and justly criticized here and elsewhere for wasting taxpayer money......

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Ken Garcia: PR maven’s journey makes for a true San Francisco tale

For someone who made a living pitching stories, Cynthia Bowman did a remarkable job of keeping one of the best stories mostly under wraps — her own.But now that she is closing her public relations shop next week after nearly 30 years of representing celebrities, sports stars, socialites and social workers, Bowman’s magical San Francisco tale can be told — and what a long, strange trip it’s been.Lean, leggy and blonde, the aspiring model, then 17, was living in New York City when she was kicked out of a prestigious......

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Are Niners stadium dreams

When the San Francisco 49ers unveiled their latest stadium proposal this week, there were a lot of Xs missing in the play calls — not the first for an organization that has gone from super to stupor in the last decade.But it’s still curious why the 49ers would call an audible to showcase their future home when it appears that much of the building design is still unknown or possibly even unworkable. The announcement even took the Mayor’s Office by surprise — showing that the players on The City’s team......

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Juvenile justice center survived overruns, delays and politics

The new Youth Guidance Center in San Francisco may not go down in history as an architectural gem — even the nicest detention facilities tend not to get that kind of recognition.But it will certainly be remembered as a fitting tribute to The City’s deep ideological divide — a brick-and-mortar salute to the town’s politically wacky ways. The center, which everyone agreed was needed to replace a run-down and obsolete building, almost didn’t get built because of objections over funding requirements that called for an increase in the......

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Santa Barbara media mess underscores importance of trust yxy xy xy

One of the great things about working for a newspaper is that it’s one of the few jobs where people — often total strangers — feel no hesitation about telling you exactly what they think of your place of employment.Love them or hate them — and no matter how good the paper might be, it’s usually the latter — people care passionately about their newspapers, developing a delicate bond with them over time regardless of how the coverage or opinions might sometimes infuriate them.Ultimately, it becomes an issue of trust,......

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Perspective needed for look at The City’s homicide statistics

Trying to predict how many homicides there might be in a city by year’s end is kind of like going to Las Vegas with a barrel of money and expecting to win. Just when you think you’re ahead of the game your fortunes can drastically turn.Call it the inexplicability of random acts. While violent crime is down overall in many major cities, several of them, including San Francisco and Boston, reported the highest homicide rates in a decade last year. And the number of murders in those two towns were......

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Ken Garcia: Soccer fans will be intense from S.F. to Paris to Rome

Somewhere between Columbus Avenue and your favorite French bistro there will be shouts of joy and tears of agony tomorrow. The globe’s greatest sporting event will come to an end — though the partying will likely extend well into the work week.Not that a lot of people have been working. I watched the United States-Ghana soccer game in a pub with about 100 people and by 8:30 a.m. at least half of them couldn’t have passed a field sobriety test. And judging by the headlines in Great Britain, England is......

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Daly needs bigger forum than Q&A for issues with Newsom

erhaps Mayor Gavin Newsomshouldn’t resist the idea of subjecting himself to a question-and-answer session with the Board of Supervisors once a month. After all, when he stands next to some of his screeching counterparts, Newsom looks eminently more sane and dignified.But I certainly understand why he appears to be balking, being that the plan is the brainchild of Supervisor Chris Daly, the board’s resident man-child, who is given to temper tantrums, gamesmanship and legislative flights of fancy.And it does seem odd that some supervisors would want to change the City......

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The City can land Olympics just by being San Francisco

Bidding for the Olympics is not unlike competing in a beauty pageant, which is why postcard-pretty locales such as New York and San Francisco are always in the running and cities such as Detroit and Pittsburgh are not.That would also explain why a town like Houston seems like a perennial long shot. According to the committee selecting cities four years ago to host the 2012 summer games, the Texas city apparently had the most sound technical and financial bid. But it had one big strike against it: It was Houston.So......

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Ken Garcia: Plenty of blame to go around in Taxi Commission bloodletting

There’s so much intrigue still swirling around the firing of the San Francisco Taxi Commission's executive director this week that the conspiracy theorists are out in full.Did Mayor Gavin Newsom want his hand-picked appointment, Heidi Machen, to be fired so he could show just how resistant the taxi industry is to reform? Was it an act of desperation by commissioners who knew that they could be replaced at any time? Or was it payback to a person who tried to promote changes without building consensus among her board and some......

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Why the Taxi Commission ran over reform-minded director

Driving a taxicab has always been a dangerous way to make a living. In San Francisco, trying to reform the taxi industry is nearly as risky. Just ask Heidi Machen. In the early morning hours Wednesday, behind closed doors, the San Francisco Taxi Commission fired Machen, the agency’s executive director, because a majority of its members grew increasingly unhappy with her performance. She tried to enforce therules regarding cab companies and drivers and the way taxi permits are issued — a rarity in an industry that resists new ways of......

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Will San Francisco pull back the veil on its strip clubs?

San Francisco is about to boldly go where few cities dare — inside the private booths of adult entertainment clubs.The town where anything goes is poised to try to make sure that some things don’t. A city commission is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a proposed ban on closed areas in strip clubs so physical contact between performers and patrons can’t take place behind the green door.Clearly, they’ve never been to the Folsom Street Fair, where people don’t seem to need a booth to show their love and affection. But......

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Lack of trust the main problem in Presidio planning process

The problem with the Presidio Trust doesn’t involve any single development in its ambitious long-range plan — in San Francisco you can’t find any sizable building proposal that doesn’t spark a neighborhood battle.And the problem isn’t that the Trust was handed an extraordinarily difficult mission when it was created — to turn a former Army base into a National Park that was self-sustaining in a relatively short period of time.No, the problem with the Presidio Trust is that, after a decade of trying to achieve its goals of slowly transforming......

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Ken Garcia: Quixotic pursuit of handgun ban reflects City Hall fantasy land

Let the record show that I agree with a majority of San Franciscans that handguns are very, very dangerous, especially in the hands of very, very bad people.Let the record also show that I support stringent gun control laws and believe that Congress has been neglectful in dealing with the clear and present danger posed by gun fanatics and their powerful lobbies.Let the record further show that Supervisor Chris Daly deserves credit for trying to make a bold statement by getting a city measure approved last year seeking to outlaw......

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Assault on S.F.’s businesses is revenge masquerading as policy

The next time Supervisor Aaron Peskin wants to start a fight, he might want to pick on someone his own size — San Francisco is just a wee bit too big for him.And that’s what our hot-tempered board president has essentially done, declaring war on businesses large and small by proposing a new tax on companies without any input from those that would be most impacted by it.Peskin’s headline-grabbing gesture this week comes complete with the same rhetoric that has accompanied similar efforts by The City’s left guard to write......

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Assault on S.F.’s businesses is revenge masquerading as policy

The next time Supervisor Aaron Peskin wants to start a fight, he might want to pick on someone his own size — San Francisco is just a wee bit too big for him.And that’s what our hot-tempered board president has essentially done, declaring war on businesses large and small by proposing a new tax on companies without any input from those that would be most impacted by it.Peskin’s headline-grabbing gesture this week comes complete with the same rhetoric that has accompanied similar efforts by The City’s left guard to write......

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Contrary to what you’ve heard, the U.S. gets a kick out of soccer

If you don’t think the United States is a soccer-mad nation, how can you explain the level of disappointment felt by so many millions of Americans today?For years now, I have been hearing ill-informed commentators opine that soccer will never make it in this country because the game is too low-scoring, too uneventful. This from a group of journalists who openly embraces the greatness of a "sport" called golf.A word to the unwise — soccer has already made it here. I haven’t been to any place in the Bay Area......

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Brutal Democratic primary leaves Arnold licking his chops

Treasurer Phil Angelides better enjoy his short victory lap after surviving his bruising encounter against Controller Steve Westly in the Democratic primary, because now he has to run a five-month marathon — and it’s almost all uphill.Winning a tough victory against someone who was a relative unknown to state voters a few months back is not a huge momentum-builder for Democrats, who now face the prospect of running against an incumbent with the best name recognition of any politician on the planet — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.Bitterly contested primaries in June......

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Brutal Democratic primary leaves Arnold licking his chops

Now that fellow Democrats — Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly — have finished beating each other senseless in one of the nastiest gubernatorial primaries in recent memory, it’s time to announce Tuesday’s big winner: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.The two Democrats who have been vying for the state’s top political job can’t be blamed for the voter apathy that characterized this election. But they certainly made leading contributions — framing their campaigns with negative attack ads that turned voters off and set the tone for what was largely a lackluster......

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Superman-is-gay hype more powerful than a locomotive

I am part of a generation that grew up reading comic books. We bought them and devoured them and traded them like baseball cards. Marvel Comics made a fortune on us and gave rise to dozens of ridiculous superheroes. Before the comics became a staple of the big screen, they were part of the regular Saturday cartoon lineup.Superman, Batman, Archie and Jughead. Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Betty and Veronica. Richie Rich. Captain America. The Fantastic Four. Comic books were to us what computer games are for the most recent generation of......

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Ken Garcia: Dozier’s courage offers glimpse into reality of war

One of the more horrifying aspects of wars is that the longer they last, the more desensitized we become to their grisly reality. Not a day passes without a variation on a headline that reads, "Blast in Iraq kills 40," without any true sense of what it means to the civilians and soldiers and families impacted by the rising casualty toll.But it only takes one incident to bring the true cost home. And this week the revelation came in a group of names attached to a story about a day......

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Bid to close JROTC makes takeover of SFUSD look wise

San Francisco and Los Angeles are both Democratic strongholds, each is a city and a county, and they are major melting pots for Hispanic and Asian immigrants. Aside from that, there aren’t many comparisons to be made between San Francisco and Los Angeles because L.A. dwarfs S.F. in almost every conceivable way.But in one sad way, they’re achingly similar. Each has a struggling, dysfunctional school district. And how each city copes with it will be critical over the next decade.In the boldest move of his short tenure, Los Angeles Mayor......

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Ken Garcia: City’s architectural aesthetic should boldly reach for the sky

When it comes to shooting for the sky in architecture, San Francisco has almost always drawn blanks. For a town that prides itself on its worldliness and sophistication, its building designs have generally been mundane and tepid, perhaps in part due to the fractious political landscape, where exasperating, endless fights loom over simple acts such as tree removal or road closure.The so-called "Manhattanization" of San Francisco’s skyline that liberal critics shouted about in the late 1960s never quite occurred, though some unspectacular buildings were erected — boxlike, cookie-cutter yawners that......

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Ken Garcia: On June 6 ballot, voters should just say no

There is a word that adequately sums up the propositions on the San Francisco ballot this June. Misguided, supercilious and ill-advised would all apply. But the simple description that works best is "no."If ever local ballot measures deserve to be thrown out, they’re the ones city voters will see on June 6, when they’ll be asked to throw good money after bad and weigh in on initiatives based on silly ideology. Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t pass. After all, anything is possible in a city that has Chris......

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Ken Garcia: S.F. Opera hopes to be on key by juggling art, commerce

The cost of a box seat at the San Francisco Opera on a premiere night is $235, not including dinner. The cost of a box seat at the opening night of the San Francisco Opera on Saturday is free, not including the labor required to bring a seat.The extent of opera’s populist appeal will be on view this weekend when, in what will hopefully become a city tradition, the San Francisco Opera holds its first video simulcast of Puccini’s "Madame Butterfly’’ in the Civic Center Plaza. The brainchild of David......

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Ken Garcia: A FasTrak that creates delays? Welcome to Bay Area transit

Bay Area residents are hardly surprised when they find themselves being taken for a ride by regional transportation agencies.Whether it’s the promise that there won’t be another fare hike or that a major capital project — like, say, rebuilding the Bay Bridge — is just around the corner, we know that big talk can be emptier than a Hummer’s gas tank.But rarely have officials insisted on forcing drivers to accept their way on the highway — until now. And this latest turn in local transportation adventures comes equipped with a......

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Ken Garcia: Finding murder witnesses just got harder in San Francisco

It’s heartening to see that San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is throwing every available body she can find into her office’s witness protection program, now that a young man under her agency’s charge was shot to death recently.But doubling the number of investigators in the program may not be the wisest choice, given that the odds someone would voluntarily let her office "protect’’ them have probably gone from small to infinitesimal.Unless I missed something in reading all the accounts about Terrell Rollins’ murder, the protection the 22-year-old witness received......

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Ken Garcia: Barry Bonds may be a jerk, but he’s not the devil incarnate

As Barry Bonds chases — and breaks — some of the most cherished records in baseball, the only thing growing faster than the number of press in attendance is the accompanying hyperbole.Now that Bonds is in the company of the baseball gods — Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron — there are forces at work determined to make sure that the gimpy left-fielder gets his devilish due. If fear strikes out on the baseball diamond, it also strikes at those who would dare join a lineup of fabled heroes now held......

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Ken Garcia: OES audit presses panic button, but you need not be alarmed

Just to show you where to get your news first, I can tell you what one of the hyped headlines in the local papers will be next week. A word of advice — it will help to read between the lines."Audit blasts S.F. emergency officials for lack of preparedness’’ and other derivatives will be on display. And there is some truth in that — but it hardly tells the whole story.For months now, The City’s budget analyst office has had a team of auditors poring over the books and files......

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Ken Garcia: Tenderloin’s heart and soul still trying to meet the need

Taking a small idea and transforming it into a civic institution is no easy matter. It takes dedication, hard work, faith and time. Lots and lots of time.But 25 years after the first seed of hope was planted, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation has grown into one of The City’s leading nonprofit housing providers — an agency that in many ways has become the heart and soul of one of San Francisco’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods.The organization will celebrate its silver anniversary with a glittery bash at the Marriott......

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Ken Garcia: New prohibitionists attacking longtime S.F. traditions

John McLaren, the fabled master gardener who crafted one of the world’s great urban parks out of sand, held such sway in San Francisco that he personally kept The City from merging the recreation and park departments for decades, fearing that two divisions often at odds with each other would become one huge, unmanageable bureaucracy.And 63 years after his death. McLaren is looking more and more like a prescient genius.The agency that once spent nearly $10 million to rebuild a swimming pool, can’t plant or maintain a decent soccer pitch......

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Ken Garcia: Candidate’s saga underlines city’s warped view of service

There aren’t many places where being fair and objective could be interpreted as being green and uninitiated.But there aren’t many places like San Francisco. Just ask Rebecca Woodson.Sometime in the next week, Woodson will have her name withdrawn as a prospective mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Police Commission. She was eminently qualified to serve on one of the toughest commissions in The City because of her background dealing with law enforcement issues — she is a former deputy district attorney in San Mateo County.But because she is an outsider......

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Ken Garcia: Sleepy Assembly contest becomes prime political theater

Until this week, the most curious thing about the Democratic Assembly race between Fiona Ma and Janet Reilly was that it had produced hardly a peep — in what was anticipated to be one of the most drag-down, all-out assaults on the local political front this year. Well, now we can stop waiting. You’d be advised to take one step back from the mud pit.With both candidates out in full force trying to lock down the Democratic Party’s endorsement at its convention in Sacramento today, the campaign teams finally took......

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Ken Garcia: North Beach politics at play in decision to ban alcohol at fair

Those who get a taste of politics in San Francisco often find it a bitter ale. Just ask the people behind the popular North Beach Festival, who recently got their liquor permit spiked by city officials for reasons that have less to do with the annual gathering than simmering community factions.The action by the Recreation and Park Commission last week was full of curious ingredients, topped off by the fact that the beer and wine permit that has been granted to festival organizers by that austere body for the past......

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Ken Garcia: Special interests on cusp of hijacking Golden Gate Park

Mark today down on your calendar as the official time when the democratic process in San Francisco got carjacked. Consider it thestart of something new — when citizens make their wishes clear yet their votes no longer count.Barring an unexpected turn, the Board of Supervisors is poised to approve a Saturday ban on cars in the east end of Golden Gate Park today — the latest political end run on an issue that has been zigzagging through City Hall for more than a decade.This current scheme has been pitched as......

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Ken Garcia: Is Wal-Mart the retail version of Barry Bonds?

The biggest slugger in baseball and the biggest retailer in the world have a lot in common — few fans outside their home base, increasing battles with lawmakers and a desperate desire to change their image.On that score, time seems to be running out for Barry Bonds. But if Wal-Mart achieves its goal to adopt a more fuzzy corporate identity, anything is possible.It may be a reach to equate one person’s troubles with that of a multibillion-dollar company, but the comparisons couldn’t be more apt or timely. In the same......

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Ken Garcia: Project Homeless Connect becoming invaluable city asset

The best one-stop shop in San Francisco can’t be found in a department store, a big-box warehouse or even a shopping mall — just a drab gray building with a ridiculously high ceiling. What makes it so special is that almost everything in it is free — including the services of the 1,000-plus customer service reps who volunteer for the privilege of being there.As we celebrate The City’s historic hardship this week, we should take into account that the same spirit that helped tens of thousands of instant refugees survive......

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Ken Garcia: San Franciscans are the masters of unshakable faith

Embracing risk is a quintessential San Francisco trait. It has been since those in search of instant fortune traveled thousands of miles in treacherous conditions to cash in on their golden dreams.The maverick nature of those who settled in The City has been one of the intrinsic underpinnings of San Francisco since it began. As we gather today to honor those who died in the 1906 earthquake and fire, it serves to remember just how determined the survivors were to rebuild. One of the most remarkable achievements in San Francisco's......

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Nice to give teachers a raise, but are we robbing Peter to pay Paul?

You know the tectonic plates must be shifting because somehow San Francisco has become the newest version of the Great Northwest — a rain-soaked timberland minus the timber.But despite the steady deluge, comparisons with Portland and Seattle fall short in three key areas — (sur)real estate, public policy and the local public schools.It’s heartening to realize that kids and young adults in The City won’t be ending their spring break with an extended spring break now that the school district and the teachers union have reached a tentative settlement in......

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Ken Garcia: Opponents’ legal obstructions helping no one in stem cell fight

The great hope has always been that stem cell research could result in new treatments for a wide variety of illnesses. But California's landmark initiative to fund the newborn science has so far only proved a need for a cure to stop frivolous lawsuits.This week, the California stem cell agency, based in San Francisco, issued its first grants — nearly 17 months after the measure to create the country’s largest stem cell research institute was overwhelmingly approved by state voters. And while the $12 million handed out by wealthy philanthropists......

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Ken Garcia: Time to honor a real hero of the 1906 earthquake and fire

The most heroic person in San Francisco that you’ve never heard of will likely be ignored again this week as The City commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake and fire. But if the town’s leaders want to finally do the right thing, they will come up with a way to honor Frederick Freeman, the man who led the crews that saved vast sections of San Francisco from utter ruin — with not even a commemorative plaque for his efforts.There is a fort named for Gen. Frederick Funston, and......

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Ken Garcia: There’s no trick play in City Hall playbook for new 49ers stadium

I’ve only been covering politics in California for about 25 years, so perhaps I’m out of touch with modern legislative techniques. But I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to run a political Statue of Liberty play, I wouldn’t place it in a bill that would require a public hearing on the floor of the state Senate. And if stealth was my goal, I doubt I would present my plan at a meeting involving a sizable segment of The City’s elected leadership.But I certainly do understand the desire to clean......

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