A war of words has erupted between Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and Public Defender Jeff Adachi via email.
The fight, as you might have guessed, is over the dueling November pension measures and Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors vote on a concession deal Mayor Ed Lee struck with police and fire.
And it comes hours after police and fire labor leaders blasted the Adachi campaign for circulating political fliers over the weekend, which happened to be the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.
Adachi had emailed members of the Board of Supervisors condemning the deal and asking them to reject it Tuesday calling it “undemocratic” and a “backdoor attempt to circumvent the democratic rights of San Francisco voters.” The deal includes a provision that shields for two years police and fire from his Proposition D pension measure should it prevail over the dueling measure Proposition C, which pretty much every elected official and political group is backing. Adachi also criticizes the deal for providing raises to cops and fire.
Elsbernd fired back a lengthy email to Adachi at 4:13 p.m. Monday criticizing Adachi for his “consistent misapplication of the facts” and suggested Adachi’s real game was creating “political fodder” as a “baseless, blatant attack against the mayor in your quest for Room 200.”
Elsbernd praised the concession package, which provides the public safety workers with owed wage hikes promised under labor contracts signed in 2007. In exchange for the wage hikes, police and fire agreed to contribute 3 percent more into their pensions which would then be supplanted by rates outlined in Prop. C, should it prevail. The deal would save The City $31 million in two years, Elsbernd said.
Adachi says the deal would “forfeit up to $61 million,” should his measure prevail, due to the shield provision, and “cost an additional $127 million in raises over the next ten years.”
Elsbernd refutes Adachi’s math, and says the pay raises were already in The City’s pension estimates since San Francisco is under obligation to pay them.
The email is concluded with Elsbernd calling on Adachi to “use facts, rather than lies, in your campaign. It is unbecoming of your position as an elected official. Let’s debate the facts, not fiction.”
